The Roots of This Tree
by frak-all
Summary: Tom Riddle is sixteen. He is also angry, a murderer, and scrambling to salvage his very-well-thought-out plan. Hermione is sixteen. She's bleeding out on the Ministry floor, and events just get worse from there. [AU from Order of the Phoenix]
1. Prologue

**A/N:** This is a story about life and death and love and the choices we make. It's also a story about magic and violence and what it means to be a soul.

If it sounds like too much to tackle, that's likely because it is. I've decided to give myself permission to try and fail with this one, though. (Cause that's how growth happens, right?)

Content warnings for blood and graphic violence. I will add more warnings if they become applicable. I don't consider it a spoiler, however, to let you know that sexual violence and coercion will **not** be present in this story.

Last but not least—thank you, sweetasylums, for looking over the first couple of chapters for me. Your help has been invaluable. Any remaining mistakes are entirely my own.

* * *

" _You can exist without your soul, you know, as long as your brain and heart are still working. But you'll have no sense of self anymore, no memory, no... anything. There's no chance at all of recovery. You'll just exist. As an empty shell."_

—Remus Lupin _, Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban_

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree  
** -  
Prologue

* * *

Hermione is fourteen.

She hangs back in the shadows, feet planted at the ring of the tide. Black, muddy water laps, recedes, and laps, nearly soaking her shoes through. Harry huddles next to her, head turning, frantic eyes searching for something — for someone.

Another heartbeat, and the water shifts, violently twisting into crackling, screaming sheets of ice.

Hermione stares straight at the scene ahead, paralyzed.

The wand in her hand is useless. _She_ is useless. This — the second time around, and she should know better, should _do_ better, but she doesn't. She can't. She has tried, and she has _failed_ — has failed over and over, always, already, again.

Above, inky hooded shapes eat the intervening space between her and _her_ in careening, ravenous gulps. The her _here_ and the her on the ground, unconscious, between Harry and Sirius.

Their bodies are pale and cold and slack, warmth siphoning from them at an unnerving rate.

They look dead.

Unmoving, she watches as the moisture dotting their skin clinks to crystalline solid. Water, she knows, freezes from the outside in.

An overmastering panic solidifies in her.

There is so much ice.

Ice and dark, hungering hands, which point and summon and pull. Sirius Black is lifted, floating limp as a ragdoll in the air. His head lolls back, exposing a bright white throat.

The darkness crowds around him now. Swirling, demanding, devouring — _excited_.

Incandescent light rips from Sirius's mouth and nose and eyes in a violent burst, leaving his body a wretched husk. Forgotten, it plummets to the ground and crumples on the ice. She notes shallow breathing, slow, barely-there movements of his chest cavity. Above, the light is white-blue, hot, and pulsing.

It is energy.

It is alive.

It is, unmistakably, _him_.

And it is wholly alone in the darkness.

The soul, she sees then, is a physical thing. Not a metaphor, or a feeling, or a chemical reaction in the brain. A _thing_.

And things can be taken from you.


	2. Chapter 1

**A/N** : Thank you to everyone who reviewed, subscribed, and favorited the prologue. Your words and thoughts are why I post to this site. In particular, my sincere thanks extend to sweetasylums who helped make this bite-sized introductory chapter presentable. Any remaining errors are entirely my own.

So, yeah. I've got another short one here, but we're going somewhere.

At least, Hermione is.

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree  
** **-  
** Chapter One

* * *

Hermione is sixteen.

She wakes disoriented on the atrium floor, both hands pressing into her front. Her memory is elusive, and then it comes at her in a flash. There's a silent, sneering Dolohov. A stream of violet fire. And —

And now there's a cut. A cut on her abdomen that's less of a cut, she's quickly coming to realize as she brings a shaking scarlet hand away, and more of a horrible weeping gash across the whole of her stomach.

It _hurts_.

It hurts so much, but it's starting to hurt less. She knows this is not a good thing.

It's hard to worry about that, though, because in the next instant, Harry's heart shatters, and hers might break a bit too. Professor Lupin, thank goodness for him, wraps around her friend like an anchor, bodily holding Harry back as blinding grief erupts from his throat, intending to propel him forward and swallow him whole.

The spells pay no mind. They whizz about in pinks and purples and reds and _greens_ , as Harry shouts— _screams_ , streams of color that play across the room in bright, bounding flashes. In the center, at the focus, there is a dias with an archway, a tattered black curtain, shimmering and sucking. The slight sway of it increases, ripples with its recent capture, reflecting and collecting and catching more than just her eye.

She hadn't heard anything before, had told Luna and the others as much, but now, from the depths of the curtain, comes a drowning, wrenching cry of such abject pain that it nearly knocks her back.

Her vision blurs.

The calling cry persists, prolonged — ageless. She feels the hurt resonate and rebound, ricochet around her cavernous, ringing insides, knows it is somehow picking up speed instead of giving into inertia. It is in her and she can feel herself filling with it now, feel it boiling, tugging, taught and intense.

She chokes, and her slick, bloody hand grabs frantically at the skin of her throat. The bright bouncing pinks and purples and reds and greens are pinpricks of light, then they are gone entirely. She tips forward, vision black —

She tips forward and continues to tip, torn.

* * *

There's a veil, see. A doorway.

And unlike Sirius, she isn't pushed through.

She's pulled.


	3. Chapter 2

**A/N** : Oh, hello. If you reach the end of this chapter, please drop a line. Or at least a letter. (My favorite letter is "Z," FYI.)

Now on to the chapter. (Things happen! The verb of the story begins.)

Let's go.

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree  
** -  
Chapter Two

* * *

Her ears are ringing. This is her first bit of consciousness in what must be forever.

Hermione blinks, and all she sees is white, the light blinding. There is only so much her senses can take, so she closes her eyes for the moment as her hearing adjusts.

Her head slumps to the side, and woven strands of thick, almost-smooth wool brush against her cheek. Her hand twitches. She extends her fingers minutely, testing, flexing. Reaching out, eyes still firmly closed, she searches for her wand across the top of what must be a very fine rug.

"Who are you?"

The clanging in her eardrums is lessening, but that's also before the voice. The voice itself is distant, and though it feels like her head's underwater, she can hear the words well enough, can tell they're shouted.

"Ungh," she croaks. It's supposed to be a question.

 _Where am I?_

 _What happened?_

 _Did everyone make it out?_

She isn't sure which one she's trying to say, but any would do.

She blinks in rapid-fire succession, her vision white-black-white-black-white, until the light and dark converge into a manageable mix. As they do, a face starts flashing into focus next to her on what she had correctly deduced was a rug. A persian rug. Hermione blinks again, the world coming together now, and finds herself staring into the glassy, unseeing eyes of a middle-aged man.

She screams.

"Be _quiet_!" the voice yells, cutting her off. She has enough awareness now to tell the voice is coming from behind her.

She jerks her head around, her breathing a heavy, hitched staccato. At the rapid turn, vertigo slams into her. Hits her hard. Makes her dizzy.

The physical dizziness, though, is no match for the swirling confusion she feels as she puts a face to the voice yelling at her. Because it's the man on the rug, only younger. And—not a corpse.

No, his eyes are definitely, distinctly alive. Wild, even.

She's breathing faster now. It's unsteady, uneven. _Panic_. This is panic.

"Who are you?" he asks again, louder, his pale skin flushed a mottled pink. "What are you doing here?"

Her eyes lock on his face, and she sees that pale, mottled skin, and a head of messy black hair, and a rage — a _panic_ so dissimilar to her own, as her right arm swings across the rug in a quick, searching arc. Her hand hits the top of her thigh without coming across anything.

Her jeans are soaked and warm.

She's still bleeding.

"Hel - _help_ ," she calls.

The young man starts, looking over his shoulder, then back to her. He's holding a wand tightly in his left hand. Hermione sees the handle of another wand sticking out of his trouser pocket. It must be hers.

Instantly, her arms heave against the floor, and she attempts to sit up.

It's not a good idea.

* * *

When Hermione jerks awake again, she is in a bed. On top of a bed. Dense, scratchy wool irritates her arms, and it feels like there's a weight on her head. Her hands fly to her stomach, under her torn, blood-stained shirt, and find a rope of tender purple-pink scar tissue. She exhales.

"How are you feeling?"

The voice is deep, precise, and polite. Somehow, she manages to keep from reacting suddenly.

She sits up slowly instead, thudding heart heavy in her ears, limbs sluggish, and head foggy. Adrift. Her back presses into the wall behind her as her bottom half sinks further into the bed — though, it's really more like a cot; there's no headboard or footboard, and the mattress is so pitifully thin that it might actually be made of straw.

The room she's in, if one could call it that, is warm, cramped, and dark with a low, sloped ceiling. Cracks of yellow morning light pierce through a haphazardly shuttered window, providing partial illumination to the room, which appears to be the whole building — a shack.

It's filthy. _Putrid_ , really. There are potion ingredients sprawled and rotting by a dusty, upended cauldron and empty fireplace, rabbit bones and rat carcasses littering the floor, and snakes — actual _snakes_ — nailed to the door with thick iron spikes practically cleaving their necks. Some are so large they nearly touch the floor. She's not sure, because her vision is slightly blurred around the edges, but she thinks one is still moving.

She grimaces and looks away.

In the tiny, dirty space, it's impossible to miss the teenager keeping vigil at her bedside on a rickety wooden chair. For one, he's the antithesis to this place — clean and meticulously put together. For another, he is so close she can almost reach out and touch him. So close he can certainly reach out and touch her.

She can't avoid noticing him, not in a space so small. She scans his body, tries to place him, her eyes roaming the structured plains of his face, the carefully combed waves of dark, dark brown hair, the unblemished, unlined pale skin, the wide mouth, the full lips, quickly skipping over and around the details, piecing disparate parts together as best and fast as she can.

He is dreamlike, beautiful, and utterly unfamiliar.

He brought her here.

Hermione glances down, frowning, as a lurching clutch of fear snaps in her. She sees a wand in his lap, just beyond her grasp, resting perpendicular to his knees. It isn't hers, but it looks almost identical to Harry's. Slightly less worn, maybe, but it could be its twin.

"You've been asleep for awhile. Are you feeling alright?" the teenager asks. His voice is velvet and swathes her in concern.

"I'm not sure," Hermione answers cautiously, moving her eyes from his lap and scooting farther back against the wall. "Better, I think."

Her head hurts, and her mouth feels like it's full of cotton. She wonders if it's from the dehydration, blood loss, or something else entirely. She swallows. The little saliva that's in her mouth is thick, stringy.

"That's good. I was worried. I wasn't sure how you'd be feeling, to tell you the truth."

She doesn't look back at him, focusing instead on her dry, blood-stained shirt. He sounds genuine, though. Kind.

"Thank you for healing me," she says slowly. Her tongue darts over her lips, and her eyes flick to the door and back.

The connections — the connections aren't coming, and she knows this isn't right. She feels tired, yes, but it's beyond than that. She's numb and sluggish, and her thoughts tingle, like her brain is a limb that has fallen asleep, just a jumble of pins and needles.

"You did heal me, right?" she asks, unsure. Anxious. Stumbling.

She's tripping around in her head on feet too weak to stand.

"Yes," he says, and out of her periphery, she sees him nod and give her a close-lipped, appraising smile, inclining his head calmly, magnanimously. The gesture feels so ludicrously out of place.

"Thank you. Thank you for your help," she says, and it's genuine. Kind. The gratitude spills from her without any conscious thought at all, and it's like she's putting too much pressure on a nerve.

"Someone hit you with a very dark curse," he all but whispers, voice low and, again, very concerned. "You nearly died. Do you know what happened to you — how you got here?"

She feels skittish. Confused and unwell in a way that seems deeply wrong, even for her injury. But something about his words and his tone bother her, so she forces herself to look at him. Not around him. Not over his features. She looks a _t_ him, and their gazes clash, crack and puncture like an electric shock.

His eyes are brown-black, intense, and focused entirely on her. At once, Hermione sees in them a light — an absence — a silvery blue deepness and a black, craggy darkness. The veil flashes, someone screams — prolonged, _undying_ , and then a man is lying murdered and empty next to her.

She recoils.

How could she _forget_?

Did he make her forget?

She closes her eyes, exhaling raggedly, collecting herself. She will _not_ panic. Panic doesn't help anything.

This is simply a problem that needs solving, and when she solves it, when she puts the pieces together, she'll understand.

It's morning, and she's not at the Ministry, and she's not at Hogwarts, and she's not at Grimmauld Place. She nearly died — thanks to, at least in part, a curse from Dolohov. Then a man who looked like an older version of the young man sitting before her _did_ die. Somewhere in between, a madly cackling Bellatrix Lestrange shot Sirius through the veil, and she felt a wrenching, blinding scream.

This is what she knows.

Is it?

Hermione opens her eyes, and he is still staring at her, trying, she thinks, to catch the path of her gaze again. He has a consuming, probing stare. The kind that takes and takes and doesn't miss much.

She looks away. The dark denim of her jeans is dirty, dry, and stiff. Gradually, she bends her knees, pulling her legs up further on the cot, into herself, like the coils of a spring.

"I—I don't know. Where is here?" she asks, her voice sounding even weaker than she feels. "Where am I?"

The teen tilts his head and fiddles with a large black and gold ring on his left index finger, watching her like she is a curious thing.

"Little Hangleton," he answers after a second, like he's mulling something over.

"Oh."

Her heart stutters. Plummets. Over one hundred fifty kilometers from the Ministry, and the only person she's ever known to have been here is Harry — and that hadn't exactly been by choice, either. Outwardly, she tries to give as little away as possible, to not let the unsteady build of anxiety show on her face. Fear, panic — they don't help _anything._

The young man leans in slightly, his crisp white button-down wrinkling and the empty gaping pockets of his trousers expanding, but otherwise he makes no apparent move to ask her anything.

She fights back a frown as another piece clicks. "I'm sorry, what was your name? I'm not sure we've met."

"No," he says, "we haven't. I wish it was under better circumstances, but, well," he pauses, and it's charming; it _means_ something. "I'm Tom."

She doesn't know what to do with charming, though; it's another thing that doesn't fit. She knows that, somehow.

Her brows knit, and she presses. "Tom...?"

"Just Tom," he answers, tone clipped. He looks rather cross all of a sudden, and it's a frightening, refractory expression.

"Tom," Hermione says, planting the soles of her shoes flat on the mattress, testing the name. It feels wrong. Everything about what's happening feels wrong. She comes to a decision.

"Tom," she repeats, firmer, "have you seen my wand? I seem to have misplaced it."

She watches him, and he watches her.

"I'm not sure what you—"

"Okay, then."

She lunges, diving sideways for the wand on his lap.

She lands roughly, slamming into him. Her right hand brushes gleaming, pristinely polished wood, and her magic flares spectacularly at the slight touch, clearing her head with a shout. Her fingers curl around the cylindrical tip of the wand, and it's perfect, and it's hers — and suddenly she's grasping air, then she's grasping nothing at all, arm still outstretched, her body partway falling off the cot. She tenses, her hand curled in a hard fist.

She swings it upward and catches him on the jaw.

He staggers in his seat, momentarily stunned. Hermione is halfway on top of him now and not wasting any time. She clambers for his wrist, pushing against the mattress behind her and practically crawling up his body, causing the small, straining wooden chair they're both on to rock back.

She doesn't pause to look at him — doesn't pause to think. She wraps her hand around the wand, her fingers overlocking and interlacing with Tom's long, thin ones; the ring on his finger burns hot, and her magic screams, floodwaters building and ready to burst. There's no way she's strong enough to wrench the wand from his firm grip, not now, so she squeezes her fingers tighter, pulls at her magic, and yells.

" _Expelliarmus!"_


	4. Chapter 3

**A/N:** Boom.

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

Chapter Three

* * *

There's an explosion.

* * *

When she hits the wall, neck whipping and head smacking against the exposed, roughly cut wood of the shack, she doesn't feel it. She doesn't feel it as her body slumps to the mattress and her vision tunnels and her ears ring a cascading, rippling note. But she does feel a pull.

Her magic thrums in a vacuum.

Her palms are empty.

Across the small room, Tom's limp form is collapsed near the fireplace, the back of his head flush with the upended pewter cauldron.

Hermione picks herself up. Painstakingly, she scoots forward, then swings her feet off the cot. She stands, and her legs buckle under her weight.

She lands on all fours, her knees and palms slapping the achingly solid floor. The lack of control is unnerving, worrying, but she resolves not to think on it.

Instead, from her new vantagepoint, she surveys the room. She searches it still as she struggles to her feet, her pulse rabbit-quick and practically audible.

All she sees is dirt. Dirt and filth and the broken, digested bones of rodents and mice and other small creatures. And Tom. She sees his form, too. Though it looks like it's not completely broken, she thinks.

She hesitates.

Uncertain, she lifts a trembling hand and whispers, low and clear, _"Accio Wand!"_

She scans the room and waits, wanting and hoping, willing her wand to appear from the wreckage of the room and fly into her expectant hand. The magic that surrounds her, is in her, is her — it could do this for her, this feat of technically above average skill, if she does her part right.

But nothing happens. Not a movement, not a flicker.

Her foolish heart sinks.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Tom stir.

She bolts, immediately stumbling for the door. Skirting her bone-deep revulsion, she knocks aside the corpse of a brown diamond adder obscuring the doorknob, its slick scales sliding against her skin, and wrenches at the metal handle.

It's locked.

She tries the handle again, shaking the door so hard that the snakes swing and rattle like perverse pendulums. The largest, heaviest one severs on its iron nail, falling, finally decapitated, to the floor.

More snakes are knocked aside and the smell of rotting, desiccated meat nearly makes her retch, but it's no use. The door is locked, yet there isn't a _visible_ lock. It has to be magic.

Immediately, her eyes fix on one of the shuttered windows. The one directly above the bed. She scrambles back on unsteady feet, feeling endlessly stupid as she retraces her steps; she's relieved when she finds the thick glass panes are latched from the inside— not with magic but with a simple metal catch. Her fingers trip over the small latch, hands shaking with worried tremors, but she gets it open. The rusty hinge screeches in protest.

After that, though, the wooden shutters open with absurd ease. Fresh, clean summer air greets her.

The sun is truly risen now, and morning light glows, reflecting off dew-laden grass and a mist-covered treeline, bouncing back at her, bright and shimmering. The scene is beautiful, almost ridiculously so, but she doesn't have the time or energy to take it fully in. She has to leave, and fast. Before he gets up.

She glances down, thankful not to find a hedge or overgrown bit of shrubbery below her. Still, it will be a slight drop. There's no other way.

Awkwardly, she leverages her left leg through the window, thigh propped on the windowsill and hands grasping for purchase on the outside of the house. She pulls her other leg up with some effort. Her muscles strain, all conscious thoughts and direction, and they aren't happy with her. They're screaming with just how much they aren't happy with her.

"No! _Stop!_ " she hears Tom shout, and the wooden shutters start to rattle.

 _Not a chance_ , she thinks.

Adrenalin kicked, Hermione slides out the window and falls forward to the ground. Not waiting for the red light of a stunner, she scrambles to her feet and starts running.

Directionless but intent, she keeps going.

At least, she does until she's tackled.

* * *

A solid body slams into her. Surprise aside, her strained muscles have no real resistance left to give. She goes down hard — and with her, him.

The dark, compact earth is unforgiving, smacking into her from her knees to her breasts to her chin, and then not an instant later, the weight of Tom's body drops on her fully, pushing her further down.

Copper flames in her mouth, her roughly bitten tongue a casualty of the fall. Tears bloom in her eyes, nearly breaking her.

 _What is going on?_

There's incredulity, uncertainty, _pain_ ; all of it coalescing as welling water.

She blinks the tears back.

In that second, firm hands roll her over and pin her down.

"Get off of me!" she sputters.

Tom ignores her.

"Tell me who you are," he growls, grasping her bare wrists tightly and thrashing them to the ground at her sides. His mouth is twisted, hair bloody, and his dark, dark eyes burn black. She has never seen a look so intense, so demanding, like he can see right through her.

She doesn't want to tell this enraged, clearly unhinged stranger anything, doesn't feel she ought to. He memory charmed her. He _killed_ someone.

He killed someone.

"Hermione," she says through pink, gritted teeth. A cornered thing, she wants to hiss and spit and claw.

 _He_ nearly does.

 _"What?"_ he responds. The question is savage.

She swallows, but it doesn't keep a diluted mix of blood and saliva from trickling out of her mouth and down her chin. A harried part of her wonders, worries. How much has she lost after what happened at the Ministry? After what happened at that house?

"My name is Hermione," she says, over-enunciating like she's talking to Viktor. "Her-my-oh-knee."

He narrows his eyes at her ill-timed sass. He doesn't call her on it, though. Instead, he presses, angry and scowling, his own blood pooling at his hairline and trickling down his forehead in a jagged shape. "Hermione _what_?"

"Granger," she bites back immediately, defiant. She is bruised, bloody, tired, and so very, very confused. But she is _not_ ashamed of her last name.

His dark brows knit. "I've never heard of you," he says.

"Yes, well, I've never heard of you, either."

The grip on her hands tightens. He leans over her, sneering, and opens his mouth. But before he can say anything, a plump red droplet falls from the crown of his still-bleeding head and hits the creased skin between her eyebrows. Her entire body tenses, stunned by the bloody splat.

Another hits, then.

And another.

Tom leans back, but more drops fall, and red runs in rivulets across the bridge of her nose and down the crevice of her left nostril like a gently trickling stream. As the small amount of blood passes her nose and stops just at the upturned curve of her lip, Hermione snaps.

 _No_.

She wrenches her head side to side with enough force that she thinks she could break her own neck. With a bucking jerk, her whole body kicks.

"Get _off_!" she shouts, twisting, attempting to roll, but efforts to extract her arms are weak against his firm grip, and he is sitting on her knees.

"No," he says, his eyes jumping from her curling, scrambling fingers to her bloody face. "Calm _down_."

She makes a loud, guttural noise and digs the left side of her face into the dirt, doing her best to smear her skin clean with the small rocks and grit of the ground. She thinks she's gotten it all but digs her cheek down one more time just to be sure.

"Are you quite done?"

She glares — sees his disgust, his disdain. She also sees his swelling jaw; the fine line of it blooms a satisfying, newly plum-red. It makes her ache to hit him again, but the ache doesn't match the one she has to get away.

She contemplates screaming, then. Loud, shrill, and piercing.

But she has no idea where she is, other than Little Hangleton, which may or may not be true. If it is true, she's on the outskirts, back in the woods. Not in the city, certainly. Not near any people.

So she stills. Calms _down_.

"What do you want?" she asks after several deep, regulatory breaths. "What will it take to make you let me go?"

Clearly suspicious, he presses hard on her wrists once, twice, a warning, before slacking his grip and leaning back to sit more firmly on her legs. He eyes her critically, and again she sees the quickly turning cogs of calculation in him.

After several pooled seconds, he speaks. "How did you know the riddles?" he asks, and just like her own turn to calm, his is night and day. Collected, compartmentalized coolness contrasting so extremely with the fierce burn of moments ago.

Her wrists appreciate the reprieve, but she has no idea what he's talking about.

"The what?"

"The _who_ ," he says with impatience. "The Riddles. You were in their house."

"Riddles?" Hermione chokes, eyes widening as she takes in the swarming, swirling logic before her. Her voice drops. " _Tom_ Riddle?"

Tom Riddle. Little Hangleton. The someone dead on the floor; the bones used to bring him back. They are pieces, and they clink together perfectly. Impossibly.

Tom Marvolo Riddle.

 _I am Lord Voldemort._

He is Lord Voldemort.

She can't believe it. _She can't believe it._

What else is there to believe?

The fear squeezing her insides grows claws that hook in deep. Tom's - _Voldemort's_ weight on her legs pales in comparison.

But _how?_

Tom has leant in eagerly, greedily at her blurted acknowledgment of him, at the twisted, horrified expression that she undoubtedly wears.

He opens his mouth, and —

There's a loud pop.

It goes off somewhere behind her, back by the hovel of a house she ran from. It sounds like a car backfiring, though she knows that's the last thing it could be.

Hermione doesn't need to crane her neck around Tom to know there's nothing but a winding, overgrown path leading to the shack. She won't be able to see it if she looks, which means _they_ can't see her.

Tom swears, jumping to the appropriate conclusions before her, but he's not fast enough. His left hand leaves her wrist, but it doesn't make it to her mouth before she turns her head and screams a piercing, pleading, prolonged note. Seconds later, his hand cuts off her cry, but she smiles around it, the blood on her teeth rubbing off on the lightly calloused skin of his palms. She's won this round.

They hear her. They have to.

"I'm going to find you," Tom says fiercely. "And you're going to tell me everything."

A threat. A promise. From Voldemort.

She laughs. How absolutely barking this dream is. How absurd.

She doesn't respond, but it appears he doesn't expect her to. He gets off of her, rising nimbly to his feet and bounding off into the dark woods, away from the hedgerowed path, and away from the apparating stranger, with long, pumping strides.

She looks up, laughs again. The cloudless blue sky is entrancing above her — so pretty, so bright, and she's still laughing sporadically, disturbingly, between gasps of pain, but she pushes herself up. She spits, wipes her mouth with the back of her sleeve, and stands, limping back toward the ruined cottage, looking for her savior around the bend.

* * *

No one is there.

* * *

 **A/N again:** Thank you, sweetasylums, for looking over this chapter for me. Any remaining errors are my own.

And thank you to everyone who felt this story merited an extra second of their time. Every time I see someone favoriting, signing up for alerts, or writing a review for this story, it makes my day. (But especially thank you for the reviews. Those are unequivocally the best.)


	5. Chapter 4

**AN:** Thank you. I understand that when words are repeated often, they can sometimes lose their meaning. I hope that never happens here, cause I'm going to be saying it a lot. Thank you.

A special thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who reviewed. I'll reply to all that I can tomorrow morning, if I haven't replied already. Getting emails in my inbox that aren't from clients, Facebook, or retail companies makes my heart happy, so please don't be a stranger. Come say hi, if you're comfortable. Either here or on Tumblr works perfectly for me. (I have the same username.)

This chapter is unedited, so apologies if there are any errors or bits that need nixing. I finished it just a few minutes ago and wanted to get it out before bed.

xoxo

* * *

Now on to the main event —

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

 _Chapter Four_

* * *

He circles back to her with slow, prowling steps.

She isn't all that surprised, really. Minutes ago, Tom Riddle tackled her to the ground like a seasoned rugby player. Finding an Auror around the corner would have been nice, but with all of the other pieces in this dreamscape, expectations beg a rewrite.

Because the reality is that the only person here and looking for her is Tom Riddle.

Tall, murderous, unmistakably solid Tom.

He crowds in closer, blocking her exit. His hands hang loosely by his sides as he walks toward her, steady and smug. Likely, she tells herself, he ran out of the house without his wand. Surely he would have drawn it by now otherwise.

Perhaps he doesn't need it, though? This _is_ the once-and-future Voldemort, after all. Maybe he surpasses the magical restrictions mere mortal wizards face.

With hate and intent and a pointed finger, he might just be able to utter a single word and strike her down.

Down and down and down to the ground, like a rugby tackle.

A hiccuping laugh escapes her lips.

She hears the unhinged cadence of the laugh, her laugh, after it happens, like it's reverberating static or the echo on a phone line. Like she's torn in two, her body on one plane of existence and her mind on another.

 _(this is real, this isn't real)_

It doesn't matter. It's all pointless speculation, because clearly she's experiencing a hallucination brought on by blood loss. Or likely it's a poor reaction to the painkilling potions Madame Pomfrey undoubtedly has her on. There's always a chance Fred and George have something to do with this, too, for leaving them out of the Ministry flight and fight. One of those options. One of the rational plots.

Still, the pain feels real enough. The pounding in her head, the newly-rendered-and-repaired tear in her gut, the abject ache of her muscles. _She's_ experiencing that well enough. _She's_ the bruised body.

And dream or not, real or not, the motivation to avoid pain is universal. Crystalline. And something she's living out quite keenly at the moment, regardless of whatever form of reality this is.

 _(this is real, this isn't real)_

Tom speaks, and her attention is snapped back to him. To this tall, murderous, unmistakably talking him.

"Where do you think you're going?" he asks, raising his hands slightly, fingers spread out, like he's casting a net in case she tries to run past him. "There's no way out, Hermione."

She stutter steps back.

Tom crinkles his eyes, bares his teeth, gives her a near-perfect imitation of a smile. At least, she thinks he's smiling — or trying to, anyway. He's doing it — the almost-smile, the calm, confident taunting — because he can. Because she is cornered, a rat in a trap, and he knows it.

Turning, she looks for an exit that doesn't exist. She can't help it. She at least has to _try_.

The rundown cottage is close behind her, locked, exactly as they left it. The cottage door is shut tight, the window open and unshuttered. The man or woman who came briefly, minutes ago, left without consequence. Or perhaps never existed at all.

And... well, maybe that's her in. The dreamland giving her a backdoor.

As she flies through the possibilities, Tom-Riddle-Voldemort slows to a swaggering stop. He's still several yards away from her yet completely and utterly at ease. After all, what's the point in pouncing? He can take his time this go-round. Can do whatever he wants, whenever he wants.

There's no way out.

"I'm not going to let you ruin this for me," he tells her, a plainly stated fact, as he runs a hand through his blood-and-sweat-soaked hair, pushing the damp, heavy dark locks from his forehead.

She doesn't know what "this" is, but she takes a wild guess that it has something to do with his recent patricide. How odd that she all but saw it happen and yet everything about it feels distant, discordant, disorienting.

Magic, memory charms, murder. It's all so much and all so wrong. Everything about _him_ feels that way, too.

He's just so _young_ and _handsome_ and wholly at odds with her every idea of what Tom-Riddle-Voldemort is and should be that she feels like this must be another person, another life.

 _(this is real, this isn't real)_

He pulls his hand away from his forehead and squints at it before glancing back at her. He looks confident, intrigued, enraged. A mix of emotions she isn't capable of diagnosing.

She's distracted. Spiraling.

"Ruin what?" she asks, continuing to step backwards. As stall tactics go, it's among her most pathetic.

He wipes his hand on his trousers and glares at her. "Don't do that. Don't play games with me. You know who I am. You know _exactly_ what I mean," he says, then tilts his head and frowns, "though I'm not sure how."

Then he hisses. Actually _hisses_ , with intent.

She's mid-step back and stumbles, nearly tripping. She has no idea what he's getting at, clearly, but she knows he's expecting a response, and he isn't getting one.

The parseltongue goes on, sibilant strings of nonsensical syllables. When there is no sign of comprehension from Hermione, Tom-Riddle-Voldemort's mouth contorts, his inflection gaining unmistakable heat. With the vitriol spilling from him, he could likely summon snakes, twisting and turning like hungry roots at her feet to hold her down.

She takes another cautious step back. And another.

As she does, she imagines he must be cursing at her if he isn't literally cursing her, calling her all kinds of filthy, snake-based epithets, until her back brushes against the mossy, vine-covered wall, hitting it like the trapped rat she is.

Her hands run along the ruined cottage, the pads of her fingers touching, scraping, digging into the wall, and she tries to pull strength from its solid presence, its stability.

( _this is real, this isn't real_ )

 _It'll be okay,_ she thinks. _I'll be okay._

Because there's a hole in that wall, and like a rat, she intends to crawl through it.

* * *

Fear is a powerful motivator. Adrenalin is an incredible drug. And magic? Well, magic can rend the world.

Before today, Hermione could confidently say she'd never attempted anything close to a pull-up. Or anything requiring upper body strength at all, to tell the truth. Hauling herself up the side of the shack and pushing herself through the open window completely ruins that claim.

Going by her current state, it should have been impossible. Funny what magic does to that word. Impossible.

Hermione slides across the wooden windowsill, wincing as the newly-healed gash on her stomach scrapes across it, and lands face-first on the mattress in an undignified heap. Her feet still hang, helter-skelter and twitching, just outside.

She moves to get up. Her arms push against the thin, lumpy mattress, and fail her entirely. She collapses.

She _refuses_.

There's no time to wait to get stronger or for help to come, not if she wants to get free, to go home, to wake up. So no, her body isn't allowed to give out yet. She won't let it.

There's more to do, and she has to be quick.

Quick, like her right foot jerking back.

"Nice try," Tom spits.

She's dragged. _Yanked_. There's a tug at her right foot, a firm hand wrapped around her ratty trainers, one more grasping her jeans. He drags her back an inch and then another and another before she finds her balance by digging her fingers into the mattress and curling her leg, and even then she's still losing ground.

"No!" she shouts, her left leg flailing ineffectively, kicking against his chest. "Let me _go_ , you-you _murderer!_ "

"That's not going to happen," he says, a patient, solid wall. "Not until you tell me who you are and what you know."

"I don't know anything! Trust me, I don't!"

"Fine," he says, and tugs. "Be that way."

Riddle's hand yanks, and she pulls, and his hand _yanks_ , and she _pulls_ , and she wants to yell, wants to _scream_ , and her trainer comes suddenly, completely off of her foot.

They come apart, equal and opposite directions, him staggering back onto the ground, her falling forward into that dumb, tattered mattress. She turns her head, cheek pressed against the woolen blanket, then continues the twist until she's flipped around, facing the window. She's not going to have her back to him if she can help it. Whatever happens next, she'll meet it and him head on.

Riddle's recovery time is fast, but that's no surprise. He rights himself, drops her old shoe with a visible twinge of disgust and moves forward, sneering, hand outstretched.

She kicks.

Her foot connects squarely with his face.

The pad of her foot hits his forehead; the heel of her foot hits the bridge of his nose.

Her legs retract, again like springs, and she rolls up, jumps forward, and, just barely, shuts and latches the window before his fist slams into the glass.

The sound reverberates, and she drops back to the mattress in an instant, staring up at him wide-eyed, breathing hard, breathing heavy, like she'll never stop.

She's going in circles. She's retracing her steps.

She's losing her goddamn mind.

* * *

"Do you really think this is going to keep me out?" His fist bangs against the thick windowpane again, the edges of his once pristinely white cuffs sweaty and stained. "Do you really think _glass_ is going to keep me out, like I'm some filthy _muggle_?"

She closes her eyes. Tries her best to ignore him. To pray that it will, in fact, do just that. And if it won't, well, there's nothing she can do about it by gawking at him. She slinks to the floor, all but boneless, before catching her breath.

After an unsteady moment, she searches for her wand on her hands and knees.

Plates and cups and rags are flung in the air, out of the way, but it seems like whenever she tosses one thing aside, two more items take its place.

Desperate, her hands brush more dirt, debris, and decay away as she works a path from the bed to the fireplace.

Hell, even _his_ wand would do at this point.

The banging intensifies, and she drowns it out with her own worries.

She's not finding her wand or his wand or any wand at all, and she's not sure she's going to after all this. She'll be trapped in here until he finds a way in and kills her, or until he burns this place to the ground and kills her. Either and every way, she's dead.

She really, really doesn't want to die.

With trembling fingers, she continues looking. The cottage smells something awful and the summer heat is picking up with every lost minute of the day. She's sweating but looks past it as she rolls the pewter cauldron over, throws a cracked clay pot of cakey, silvery powder behind her, shoves aside a partially digested rat carcass, tosses away a tattered embroidered silk handkerchief with more holes than fabric. She's moving jerkily, feeling utterly unhinged, so it takes a second for her brain to catch up with her hands. It does, though, since she can't exactly turn her brain off, has never been able to.

It catches up, and her forehead falls to the dirt floor, and she exhales harshly before moving up and sitting back on her heels. She does it all carefully, but her vision still tunnels, catching up with her as well, and she's suddenly the definition of the word woozy. Woozy and stupid.

She turns slowly and grabs at the shards of the now completely broken pot, breaking chunks of the cakey, should-be shimmering substance away from the clay and off in her hand, crumbling a pinch of it between her fingertips.

Floo powder. Perfect. This-this is an option.

A fire's next, is all she needs, and hopefully that shouldn't be too hard to start. Hopefully she's not wasting her time on an empty fireplace unconnected, untethered, uncertain, un-

She fades out, slapped with black.

 _(this is real, this isn't real)_

She fades in, picking her head up from the floor. Suddenly, it feels a whole lot warmer.

She knows she shouldn't, but before she turns back to the fireplace, she looks up at the window, just to see if he's still there. And he is. Of course he is. Bloody, near-broken nose, black-brown eyes, and a clenched fist.

He looks at the slab of not-quite-powder still clutched and crumbling in her hand, leans his forehead on the window and twists it slightly, his skin bright white and pink where it's pressed into the glass.

"You're making this very difficult," he says, and there's heat, but it's a steady flame, not the wild rage from before; it's almost appraising, if anything. "And you're fighting very hard."

She wants to shut her eyes but doesn't, for so many reasons. Instead, she nods once, firmly.

"Why?" he asks, hardly sounding like a person.

"I just want to go home. Let me go home, and you'll never see me again, I promise. I —"

He cuts her off. "I can't do that, unfortunately."

"You _could_."

"I can't," he repeats firmly, then lifts his forehead off of the glass. His voice drops several octaves and he looks her straight in the eye, straight into her. "Now come over here and open this window, Hermione Granger. Let's not put off the inevitable."

Her brows knit, and she shakes her head, more at herself than at him. Like she'd ever do that.

She tells him as much, and quick as a whip his fist hits the glass. It's happened so many times, that action, that she hardly flinches. The dirty thing must be spelled against shattering or else there'd be shards everywhere.

Like the clay shards of Floo powder on the floor. She looks back at him, at his absolute hair-trigger temper, and another piece to this impossible puzzle clicks.

For the moment, she breathes a little easier.


	6. Chapter 5

**A/N** at the end!

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

 _Chapter Five_

* * *

Keep steady. Breathe.

Balance. _Breathe_.

Inhale first. Exhale next. Both are rough, deliberate and intent.

Intent is important, remember that; the focus essential.

In and out. In and out.

In. And out. In _._ And out.

 _Incendio._

 _Incendio._

 _"Incendio!"_

Her voice is raspy and hoarse with the force of her whispered cry. Her cheeks heat, and sweat beads along the nape of her neck. Her skull splits open, and her brain dribbles out of her ears like jelly.

Or it might as well be. She is draining, bordering on empty, and the shell is cracking.

Her shoulders slump and her spine bends, as if cradling the scarred flesh across her gut, her rigid posture too difficult to maintain.

It shouldn't be this hard to start a fire. To cast a spell.

Her eyes flutter closed.

It shouldn't be this hard to stay conscious, either, but this is where she is. What should be a given is now a thought-propelled ordeal.

Breathing easier is entirely metaphorical, of course. That much is obvious. Riddle seems trapped outside, unable to come in, unwilling to leave, hesitant to use magic. That helps: the seeming. Some of it is probably even true. In any case, it lessens the urgency she feels, the creeping certainty of imminent death.

But it isn't a cure-all. It's the ticking of a clock.

Hermione opens her eyes and takes another breath.

" _Incendio!"_ she says again, speaking precisely, like she's reading a pronunciation guide, moving her empty, heavy hand as Flitwick taught her, textbook picture-perfect.

She fails.

Again.

She fails.

Again.

Again. Again.

Each time is an echo of the previous attempt. A car engine turning, the battery run out. Click-

click-

click.

Soon enough, the lights will flicker off and not come back on.

"Trying to cast a spell, are you?" Riddle's voice is muffled but distinct enough in this moment of forced lucidity.

Brushing damp, clinging strands of hair from her face, Hermione turns to the window and squints. He's a partial silhouette, backlit by the ever-stronger summer sun. His clear-cut form moves, blurs.

"Maybe I can help, Hermione," he says kindly, his hands beckoning against the glass. "If you come over here and try the spell one more time where I can see."

He's been talking to her a lot lately. Muffled noises flung out like a cast net, grasping for purchase. Whenever he opens his mouth, his tact shifts, as mercurial as a boggart's form.

He's probing for a reaction. Changing based on what he thinks he reads on her.

It's all a tactic. A front. Who knows what he really looks like, sounds like?

"What about if you stand?" he tries again, reasonable. "I might be able to see your form better that way, work with you from there."

And there it is.

He wants to see her to fall again. That's what happened the last time she stood.

She doesn't respond. Looking had been a mistake.

* * *

What is she without a wand?

Is she even a witch?

* * *

Hands and knees. Hands and bloody knees.

She is a child, crawling to the corner of the room. This is what she's reduced to: crawling underneath Voldemort's watchful eye.

His stare weighs on the line of her back. Alone, on her hands and knees, she sees herself as someone who is seen by him.

Despite the stare, she reaches her destination. And it's that — destination, determination, deliberation — that brings her back to the task at hand.

The cabinet in front of her is dark, roughly hewn oak. Steadily, she sits back, planting herself on her haunches. The wood is smooth to the touch from what must be decades of wear. Her hand pulls out the lowest drawer and rummages through it.

There are clothes inside. Long, dingy-white undergarments, brown cotton trousers, an old black robe, mothballs.

Not what she needs.

She isn't expecting an anachronism here. She's more than willing to work within the bounds of this setting. This cottage stagnated somewhere in the seventeen-hundreds, its own little pocket outside of time. There won't be matches.

Flint, though. Flint and steel. Those are hovering maybes. Things worth reaching for, working for.

So she looks, and she finds. Potion ingredients, bottles covered by a thick layer of dust but contents surprisingly preserved. Chocolate, dittany, murtlap tentacles—and more. Surprising, yes. Things apart from the rest. But not what she needs.

The next drawer holds more promising items: blunt metal instruments, a fork, a skewer, three knives, and a dagger encased in sloppily-stitched leather. One of the knives looks to be steel. She takes it—and the dagger, too, sliding the sheathed weapon into her back pocket.

What's after is trash in the purest sense of the word; a hoarder's illogical trove brought into the light, bared out and molding.

Combing through this hovel is a repetitive, futile forever.

Rusting pots. A waterlogged journal. Bloody feathers from too many species of bird to name, a broken leather strap, crow's feet. A dried twig. Tissue-thin snake skin scraps. Madness. Lunacy. No purpose, no meaning. Just drawer after magical drawer of ruinous decay.

She goes to another drawer, the last one. Her hair and shirt collar are sweat-soaked and dripping at a rate incongruous with the heat.

The final drawer is file-sized, and it sticks. A tiny part of her leaps at the unexpected scrape of resistance, a lifting lightness in her chest, like the fluttering wings of a small bird. Nothing good here has ever come easy, Hermione thinks. She's had to fight for it step by bloody step.

If it's difficult, it must hold her answer. Or _an_ answer. That's how plots work.

She wrenches it open.

A concentrated putrescence erupts from the airtight container, and a stench like she's never known hits her like an anvil. Her hand flies to cover her nose and mouth. Inside, there are five rats in varying stages of oozing, necrotic decay, forgotten by all but the inevitability of entropy. She slams the drawer with her other hand, staggering as she does, but it's too late.

The cottage is a hot box, closed tight under the summer sun, and the heat has amplified the toxic smell. It's as if someone microwaved the rotting, nearly liquified flesh, then shoved her in the microwave with it and closed the door. The inescapable smell doesn't even make her gag; her stomach heaves, and she retches straightaway.

Once. Twice. Her body shakes with the force of it.

She's burning and leaking at the same time. It happens again. It _hurts_.

God, make it stop. She is a wrung out rag. An old kitchen sponge squeezed out and left to shrivel in the sun.

Her awareness centers on her raw throat and heaving chest, a rapid, uneven rise and fall, as she recovers from the violent exhalations. Aftershocks course through her, and she trembles in their wake. Then she looks down.

She nearly retches again at the sight of her own vomit.

The mess is bad. She can't remember when she last had so much as a sip of water, but water isn't the liquid there.

She slumps away from it all and spits, a conscious choice, trying to rid her mouth of the sour, irony taste. Mixed strands of saliva and bile hang, dribbling, from her nose and lips. She wipes at it clumsily, the mess sticking to everything it touches. She can't get away from it, can't get it off.

She closes her eyes and tears fall.

This is not good.

Increased heart rate, lowered blood pressure, shortness of breath. Weakness. Confusion. Malaise.

Detached logic takes over even as she fights back a sob, and she catalogues each symptom as clinically as she can. They are worrisome, especially in combination, but ultimately as nonspecific as a headache.

The blood in her vomit says much more. Bright red and coffee-ground brown.

She's well and truly terrified. Perhaps for the first time. Because now, there's no adrenalin to propel her forward, shield her from the logical conclusion, hide her from the pain. There's just a sinking, certain dread.

 _How_ could she have thought Voldemort really healed her? Why didn't she stop to _think_?

To think about what she had been feeling, to figure out what the effects spelled out, instead of trying to ignore the pain, blindly shouldering through it?

Hermione shakes her head slightly—slightly, for any more will cause a clashing, vice-like throb—and rubs the salty tears from her eyes, her lips tightening. She'll indulge in self-reproach later. She will learn from it and become better from it when there's time. If there's time.

For now, she knows this: denying the truth will only kill her faster. She is not well, and she will not get better with rest.

She will throw up again—it's only a matter of when, and there will be more blood, until there is nothing but blood.

There is no escape route for her. No flint. No magic left in her. The fireplace will not light.

She needs help, or she will die.

There is only one person here—one possible, impossible source. And she knows what she must do.

On hands and knees again, she pulls the waterlogged journal out of the pile of items she'd deemed useless and begins to write, scratching a broken quill over the soft, mushy pages, eeking out her horrible, hopeless, singular plan.

She's not giving in. She's _not_.

She's pulling back, taking stock of the situation and acting accordingly. There's no good she can do anyone as a dead woman, and this is not her time to die, not a worthy enough sacrifice—not yet.

She finishes writing, the words just legible enough. She _will_ get back to her friends.

The dirt builds, caking her jeans with each drag and pull. It's effort. Too much. The cottage is but a room, yet the window is a mile away; the cot is tiny, but it is as tall and steep as a mountaintop.

At the edge of the bed, she looks up into the light above, and as she does, the desire to rest her head nearly overwhelms her, the need for support an actual ache, as only the promise of relief can be. But she doesn't do it. She can't. It's now, before it's never.

"I'm dying," she croaks into the silence. "I need your help."

She knows he is watching, had been talking nearly constantly up until her body rebelled and screamed out its limits.

In the echo of her confession, he's quiet. Focused and calculating, noting the change. What else had she been expecting?

With a lumbering movement, she lobs the journal on the bed and flips it open to what she'd written. Then comes the hardest part. She crawls up the cot, an impossible feat. Wool and wood and a steep incline. She collapses on the flat of the mattress, and the room shakes.

Or, no—it doesn't. Perspective is a funny thing.

She's blurring, and time is running out.

"I'm considering this a timeout," she says, slurring, giving herself a second of rest. She doesn't have a second, but she's sweating and her breathing is strained and rasping, and she can't throw up again, she can't now—not yet.

The whole world is a spinning top and she will die for its turning.

No. She labors up. Straightens. Sways, leaning with all the grace of a felled tree, crashing to a stop on the glass. The bony crown of her forehead hits the warm, cloudy windowpane, and her fingers fall down, fumbling with delirious slowness for the metal latch. Her eyes roam, focus difficult. He is a pale expanse of pale and dark, white and black; an intent and clinical stare.

Circles and circles. It's all circles. Spirals.

Her tongue is heavy in her mouth.

"You - make. Then, we'll—" her head slides down the glass, gravity and sweat "—talk," she slurs, fingers searching. "Can't if you don't."

It's not trust, she thinks. He can't kill her if she's already dead.

 _Click_.

* * *

 **A/N:** Hi there, friends. You know those people who are slow writers? I'm slower than them. No joke. So thanks for sticking with me.

Your enthusiasm and reviews and questions really do help speed me along, though, so a huge shoutout to everyone who sent in a review and/or PM.

Extra special thanks to cocoartistwrites who is an angel sent from fandom heaven. Not only did she help me bounce around ideas for this story, but she also looked over this chapter at a moment's notice. You should all go freak out over her story _unsphere the stars_ with me. It is epic Hermione-centric Tomione goodness.

Last but not least, how 'bout that Pokemon Go, eh? When the servers aren't down, it's #TeamValor aka #GoGoGryffindor for me.

What faction are y'all?


	7. Chapter 6

_hi, friends._

 _grad school is time-consuming. who knew?_

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

Chapter Six

* * *

She expects darkness.

Would have wanted it, really, if given the choice. A swaddling blanket of blackness. How necessary. How nice.

Instead, she finds light.

It is a light that encompasses. A light that excludes. A light burning so brightly that it leaves room for nothing else.

And it _is_ bright, this light. White-hot and pulsing. Silver-blue and scorching.

It is everywhere, all at once; as pervasive as oxygen in the air, the heat extending as far as her awareness allows. Beyond, even. It fills her.

There is no end to this incandescence. No beginning, either. It is energy, swarming and swirling and eternal.

Yet it's more than that, because she burns with it. Burns without loss; burns without pain.

 _She_ is burning.

And still, it's more than that. More than all of it, because she is the heat. She is the light.

 _She_ is light.

She knows this down to her depths, in her truest, barest self, and though it is a knowledge without facts or figures or tangible proof, she finds she doesn't need the proof, doesn't need the figures.

She is what she is, and she is burning. For a minute and forever.

White. Blue. Light. Heat.

Inescapable, unquestionable fire.

But—no. That isn't right.

Or, at least, not all. Something pushes her off track. Throws another reality in her light, a craggy black in the swirling white-blue; a contradiction, a truth.

Because, really, what does fire do? That crackling, life-giving energy—what does it do?

It _consumes_.

It takes, and it takes, and it burns all it touches. Eating and engulfing and inhaling, until there is nothing left.

It is everywhere, extends everywhere, as far as far can go, burning and sucking in great, gasping, ravenous gulps, as pervasive as oxygen in the air.

It _needs_ that oxygen. Needs that fuel. Needs to eat, needs to consume, needs to breathe.

 _She_ needs to breathe.

She needs to breathe, and she _can't_.

She needs to breathe.

 _She can't breathe!_

* * *

Her chest surges upward. Her neck stretches, tendons ropelike and straining.

She is held down, her body convulsing.

Something covers her, pressing against her forehead and pinching the cartilage of her nose. The something is rigid. A solid, immoveable force.

A hand held over her, deliberate and unyielding, pinning her down.

Her chest is burningburningburning, and she gasps, taking huge, desperate sucking gulps, guzzling air like water.

As soon as her mouth opens, cold glass bites into her bottom lip, clinks hard against her teeth. It presses further, the angle changing, and a pungent taste floods her mouth.

She coughs, chokes, then goes still.

* * *

When she stills, she finds light.

The light is a beacon. Bright and beaming. It is a sun, white-hot and pulsing.

The rays color the inside of her eyelids a saturated yellow-pink. A gradient of warmth settles over her, gradually heating her from hairline to jaw. Like a magnifying glass, it intensifies and amplifies. Like a magnifying glass, its focus helps and harms.

The burning is almost welcome, because the rest of her is so, so cold.

She doesn't realize this at first. Doesn't realize anything, really. Words are difficult. Thoughts are fragments. Figments. The trembling of limbs. Colors: reds, oranges, greys. Muffled, frozen pain.

Then her breathing stops. It's one of those vital functions that goes unnoticed and unappreciated until something breaks.

 _She_ is the something that breaks.

She tries to inhale. To inflate her cracked lungs, to drag deeply through her nose, but she can't. She tries, and she tries, but she can't.

There is a pinch and a pressure. Her airway is obstructed.

She chokes on a cough; reaches blindly, clawing.

A congealed liquid oozes over her tongue and down her throat, thick and clinging like coagulated blood.

She shudders. She shakes.

She stills.

* * *

She hears herself.

She's crying. Begging, really.

"-please," she says, coming to awareness mid-sentence. A dry, heaving sob escapes her, tearing at the cracks in her throat. "Just one sip. Just one!"

"No."

"Please!"

"No."

" _Please!_ "

The world is swirling, and she is shivering, and a man-shaped blur is next to her yet below her yet not there at all.

"I'm dying," she hears herself sob.

"You are," the dark blur agrees. "And you have. I'm trying to fix that."

"I need water to live. I'm dying without it. You're killing me."

"No, I'm not. Not yet. If I give you water, it will flood your insides, and your internal bleeding will worsen."

 _Liar_. It is all she knows for certain. This... _thing_ is a liar.

Her throat has never been this dry. It is sandpaper: rough and raw and painful. This is not — she would know if her body was getting better, would be able to feel those reserves, the relief of it.

"I'll die. I will. The human body can only take so much."

The dark blur stiffens. "You are a witch," it enunciates. "And you'll have what I give you and nothing else."

She feels her eyes close. But there will be no more tears from her. Even if she had them to give, she refuses to waste precious moisture on them — on this _thing_ in front of her.

" _Are you a witch or aren't you?"_ a memory calls, echoing back to her. With it, she tries her best to focus, feeling entrenched and stubborn and _willful_.

" _Agua_ \- _Aguamen_ -" she begins. A hand covers her mouth.

"Stop that."

She looks up and fights more for that focus. But she is coming back to a body not quite ready for her, and she cannot stay.

Dark eyes look down, attempt to pierce her. Look at her and look at her, a thing looking at a thing.

Her eyes shut for her once more, and in that moment _for_ a moment, she stops fighting. Not because of it, but because of... she doesn't know. And doesn't need to.

The energy drains out of her, and the light and dark find her, cradle her, and she slips softly into nothing. Nothing at all.

* * *

The shack is tidier. Not quite clean, but with each iteration of consciousness, it looks less and less like a hovel and more and more like a house.

Hermione doesn't know how many times she slept and woke and shook and choked down potions, but when she comes to enough awareness that she knows her name and feels her body and clears the fog from her mind, there are splinters under her fingernails and slight tickmarks on the wall. Somewhere during the whole process, she had started counting—her awareness or the days, she isn't sure.

The first time she retains her consciousness of it, there are five already there, waiting for her. Tiny sloped grooves in the wooden wall.

Hermione bites her lip to balance out the pain, to remind herself not to talk, and scratches in line number twelve.

She knows scratching lines into walls will not solve her problems. It's a tact reserved for the mad and imprisoned. And as much as she would like to not believe it, she may just be those things. Regardless, though, if there is a way for her to assert her reality on this plain, to find steady ground — an anchor — well, she is going to take it.

She scratches, even though it hurts her. Even though there is no point.

Tom-Riddle-Voldemort watches her do it. It's not a secret she can keep, what with her ruined nailbeds and close proximity to him—a proximity that never, not once stops unnerving her.

He watches her always, and always he talks.

"You're a very stubborn creature, aren't you, Hermione?" he'd said on the eighth line, as he had carefully, mechanically stirred a steadily simmering cauldron.

"You're special—different than most, aren't you, Hermione?" he'd said on the tenth line, as he had minced ginger and mandrake root with precise, even cuts.

"You're quite magical, aren't you, Hermione?" he says on the twelfth line, as he stoppers a vial of something viscous and red. Blood replenisher, she thinks.

His words are meant as compliments, at least the last ones. It doesn't take long for her to realize that, next to perhaps Professor Dumbledore, he's the most skilled magic user she's ever seen. Reverent and concise and effortless all at once, like magic is both a tool to be wielded and an extension of his own self.

He's also a liar.

And a murderer.

And Voldemort incarnate.

It makes for a difficult healing environment, to say the least. She keeps waking and waking and waking up, but never from this dreamscape. This hellhole.

The more tickmarks she makes, the more she understands—and doesn't. Her mind clears with each healing draught he coaxes down her throat, but the situation only becomes more muddled, insane, ridiculous.

And Tom—he keeps talking to her, a near-constant stream of nuance and information.

He doesn't hint at the past. Doesn't talk to her about her or the fact that she'd run in a second if she could muster the energy or that he'd held her down and threatened her for information, just about what he's making, the things he's reading, how her body is doing. It's like he's lecturing, in a way. On ingredient collection and Potions theory and magic.

She never would have thought Voldemort chatty, but she's found he likes both conveying information and the sound of his own voice. She'd assumed the stories Harry had told of his mad ramblings were a recent trait—a result of his death and resurrection. Now, she's not so sure.

Not so sure about so much.

But he talks to her, and she knows — she _knows_ — it's not for her comfort or out of the goodness of his heart or anything other than to pick her apart, but on tickmark fifteen, he heals her fingers, and she finds herself talking back.


	8. Chapter 7

**A/N below.**

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

 _Chapter Seven_

* * *

He wears black trousers and a crisp white button-down.

Again? Still?

It's difficult to tell what's today, yesterday, tomorrow for a number of reasons, let alone his appearance.

He's yet to change, as far as Hermione can tell. Perhaps he has a hidden stash of the same shirt and slacks, or perhaps he has only the one set. No matter the reason, his uniform-like clothing offers her nothing but confusion on how much time has passed. How much time she's lost.

Other than, of course, roughly fifty years.

Hermione feels a sudden, overwhelming urge to shout and scream and cry. Rage flares within her, foreign, a flash fire, but she stifles it. Won't give it air to breathe.

Instead, she turns, and the nail of her right index finger slices into the exposed wood siding, digging in, sliding deep along a diagonal. It's not enough to leave a lasting mark, so she pushes deeper. Harder. Again.

Her nail snaps. Breaks back at the cuticle, exposing raw, baby-pink skin. The hurt is a fraction of the whole, almost nothing compared to what lies beneath the raw, baby-purple-pink scar across her stomach, an anatomical area of turmoil, a part of her body that no longer feels like her own. But the break happens quickly, and the shock of it gets to her.

She sucks in a breath, muscles tensing, before moving on to her thumb.

She's also lost control. That's certainly apparent. Inevitable, even, maybe. But the tick marks do help.

She's under no illusion that they're an accurate representation of how many days she's spent here healing and stagnating on this cot, but they're a thing an invalid can do to focus, to strengthen her will, and in the process build up her magical reserves.

Will and intent, after all, are significant components of magic.

"Will and intent, after all, are significant components of magic," her healer-captor says, like he can hear her very thoughts. The old pewter cauldron stands before him, simmering, and he stirs its contents with the eerily precise movements of a well-programmed automaton. "Of course, everyone understands and applies this concept to, say, Charms or Transfiguration. It even has a prominent place in the foundations of Apparition. Destination, Determination, and Deliberation.'The Three D's,' as the Ministry calls it."

He lifts his wooden spoon straight up, the gold and black ring he always wears on his left hand glinting in the light. Not a single drop of the thick mixture falls back to the cauldron.

"But Potions?" He scrutinizes the tincture. "No. For some reason, everyone expects that ingredients will do all of the work, as if the will of the wizard is less important than an exact measure of Boomslang skin or Runespoor fangs. Specimen - _ingredients_ \- have their uses, to be sure, but they do not act alone. Not in the face of true will. True _mastery_."

"For the majority, though?" he continues, a frown marring his alabaster skin. "For them, it's only slicing and measuring and chopping and stirring, like any common muggle could do." He makes a disgusted sound deep in his throat. "What a waste."

She turns her head, repulsed at his words and her own interest in them.

Her mind has started to stretch during these last few periods of lucidity, to clear, to worry over every ounce of catalogued consciousness, and this is no exception.

The cogs in her are whirring.

What would Professor Snape say to his claims? Had he, in fact, been subject to this soliloquy on potion-making before? Had the man before her been a teacher to her teacher in more ways than one? Information travels. Oozes from brain to brain. How much of what she knows comes from him?

Why has she ever-never thought to consider potion-making the same way?

And the important questions, the ones she can't quite make herself focus on fully: How is she even _here_? Will she ever be able to leave?

She frowns, glaring at the ceiling.

The rafters are visible from this angle, peeking back down at her. For the most part, cobwebs and dust and debris have been excised from the cabin, but there above her cot, hiding in the ceiling's innards, is a thick canopy of dust, and on that canopy, a long-legged spider lowers itself slowly, hanging by a single precarious thread.

Sweat beads on her neck and forehead as she stares at the dark, dusty expanse above her. Her stomach rolls, innards twisting, like a fist beating against a wall.

Dust is composed primarily of skin cells. Tiny, sloughed off bits of flesh. Of personhood. She'd read that once, she thinks.

Whose skin comprises the dust here? His?

Hers?

From across the room, his spoon hits the makeshift work table, clanging through her thoughts, and she knows what comes next.

The timbre of his voice washes over her again, unsettling yet not quite as alien as she would like. There's something truly horrible to be said for repetition.

"One has to do more than just follow directions to achieve greatness. Potion-making demands thought, demands theory — demands _magic_ , not just mindless compliance to instruction."

He stops in front of her, and she does not look at him.

She slides out her hand on the mattress, palm up, awaiting the vial of whatever potion she must down this hour to maintain a beating heart.

The vial does not come. Instead, he bypasses her hand and grasps her extended wrist. His grip is firm yet oddly painless as he smoothly twists her arm and dips her fingers into a familiar cooling salve. She feels a spark — can't tell if it's magic.

"Dittany," he says when she frowns at her fingertips, now fully healed and tinged a slight greenish-brown. "Diluted, of course."

"Yes, obviously," Hermione spits, responding before she can think, her voice raspy and crumbling from misuse.

How utterly stupid.

Her cheeks flush, and she clenches her jaw. It's the first thing she's said in any number of days. Since she cried out for water in her waking nightmare, at least.

He's been feeding her a regimen of no less than ten different healing potions, and she's downed them without so much as looking him in the eye, let alone engaging him in conversation. Now, though.

Now -

"She speaks," he says, surprised. Delighted, really.

 _Charming_ , she thinks. _Wonderful_.

But, at the same time, why shouldn't she speak? Waiting him out in the hopes of someone, anyone, finding them no longer feels like a potential solution, a viable hypothesis, and if she is anything, she's a problem-solver.

Hermione is tired of silence, she's not entirely convinced she's still alive, at least as she's currently familiar with the term, and her brain is atrophying by the minute, so she does what she can.

She speaks.

"On occasion, yes. She does."

"Wonderful," he replies without missing a beat. It sounds like there's a grin in his voice, even. Her eyes flit to his mouth, and yes, there it is — a smile. It's winning and practiced, a thing she's seen before, both from him and from Lockhart and from the cover of magazines.

But maybe there's a hint of genuine emotion there, creeping in around the corners?

"I was beginning to think you'd forgotten how, and that I'd have to reteach you," he teases. "It would no doubt be a dreadfully boring process, and I must admit, I wasn't looking forward to it."

Hermione hums noncommittally and looks back to the rafters, cursing him in Latin, Bulgarian, German and French.

"Oh dear. And now it seems I've offended you. I'm sorry, Hermione. You must know I didn't mean anything by it."

"Of course not," she lies, the words tumbling out effortlessly.

"Good," he says, then moves to sit by the bed, as if accepting an invitation. It's then she notices the wrist of her dittany-covered hand is still held firmly in his grasp, like it's there to stay.

She's made a mistake. This hadn't been her intention.

And now she can't even get out of bed.

Has he painstakingly invested in her health just to harm her, over and over, slowly and painfully?

Is he going to start now?

Her muscles tense, and she concentrates on breathing evenly.

"Hermione," he says gently. "Would you — it's difficult to have a conversation if you won't look at me. Could you look at me please?"

She doesn't. She won't.

"I - I want to try something, if you'd let me. You see, I feel we have a connection, and I'd like to try and follow that connection. Confirm a hunch, if you will." He pauses, voice hesitant. "Surely you can appreciate the impulse there, can't you?"

All she can appreciate is that her body is a shadow of itself, her gut is killing her, and her insides are a swirling, twisted mess. Her mind, though — her mind is still her own, and she wants it to stay that way.

She considers changing the subject, asking for a glass of water.

Water. That would be nice. She can't remember drinking anything, can't remember eating anything, can't remember so much as even going to the bloody toilet. But if she asks for water again and happens to get it, does that mean that she'll all of a sudden require a toilet?

There isn't a toilet in the shack, let alone indoor plumbing. So what, then, a bedpan?

Will he have to help her relieve herself at every hour of the day? In the middle of the night?

There's only so much she can take, and that is not on the list. At least the internal trauma should keep her period from surfacing this cycle, and likely the next.

A part of her deflates. What a dreadfully sad thing to be thankful for.

She doesn't look at him or ask for water. How could she? The moment has passed. Instead, she fixates on what's happening above her, blissfully independent of him or her, as nature often is. A spider spinning a thread like a fairytale weaver, lowering itself from above, shaping something delicate and dangerous, a tapestry of recorded motion.

It almost looks like it's dancing. Twirling. Circling in the dark.

"What are you looking at, Hermione?" His voice is gentle again. Patient and curious.

"A spider," she says. And it's true. Lies are best when they're true.

He shifts in his chair, the creaking wood a fissure in the room. His thumb strokes spirals along her wrist, down and down to the sensitive interior of her palm.

"Spiders are rather interesting creatures, aren't they?"

"Yes," she swallows. "They are."

"You've heard of Acromantulas, haven't you? Jet-black spiders the size of boulders—larger, even. Wicked, venomous, deadly creatures."

"I'm not afraid of spiders," she says, looking at the one flitting about above her; at Aragog, shrinking back in fear from mention of a basilisk.

"No? And you shouldn't be, not if you have a wand. Magical creatures are incredibly useful beasts, after all, Acromantulas included. Their place in history is rather fascinating, too. Their eyes, for example, are symbols in the runic alphabet for the number eight." He leans forward slightly. A teacher, a friend, a nurse.

She's been here before.

"Funny number, eight," he continues, settling into a familiar tone. "I've always been more partial to seven, myself. More power in it. Complexity and nuance and - "

"And the unknown," she interrupts, before she can stop herself. "I wouldn't think you'd like that."

He bristles. Just a fraction, but she notices it. Picks it up in her periphery, a blurred bit of black, white, and uncomfortability.

"You know Ancient Runes?" he asks.

Hermione closes her eyes to keep from rolling them. Part of her, though, welcomes the chance to actually _think_ of something else, even if it is just rote recitation. Just a detour from their main route.

"Demiguise," she says quickly, in monotone, "Unicorn, Graphorn, Runespoor, Fwooper, Quintaped, Salamander, Unknown, Acromantula, and Hydra."

"One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine," he responds, pleased and patronizing.

"Ten, eleven, twelve, thirteen, fourteen, fifteen," she continues, flippant.

"Yes," Tom-Riddle-Voldemort says, squeezing her hand pointedly, "fifteen."

She opens her eyes at the weight in his words.

Escaping this reality isn't really possible, is it?

"Is that how long I've been asleep, then?" she asks softly.

"Not quite," he replies. His thumb strokes across her palm again, seemingly absentminded. "But that's a nice way to put it: 'Asleep.' I think I'll take to calling it that." He circles, again and again.

"How much longer will I... be asleep, do you think?"

His head tilts. "Hard to tell. The damage was quite extensive. Gruesome, really." His thumb strokes.

She knows, she knows. She should be dead, and she's not.

"Your best guess?" she asks, her voice strained with forced evenness.

"I don't like to guess, Hermione. I like to know."

And there's her heart again. In her throat, wild and pulsing.

The urge to rip her hand away is overwhelming. Echoes of his touch skate up her arm, around her neck, straight across her torso. Her skin is literally crawling.

"Would you look at me, Hermione?"

She closes her eyes, clenching them tight like a child hiding in the dark.

"My stomach hurts," she says. Her left hand cradles her midsection. "The scar. It's like there's something there, pushing."

It's true, it's true; lies are best when they're true.

He makes a sympathetic noise and scoots closer. Her gut twists. Hands pound at her ribcage, loud and furious, a prisoner banging at the bars.

She clenches her eyes tighter, wincing, like she's bracing for impact.

 _I won't open them,_ she thinks. _You'll have to make me._

He lifts her hand, and she feels it go, a puppet's appendage, following a string.

He squeezes it. Once. Twice. A warning.

Then he lets go.

Then he stands up.

"I hate to see you like this, Hermione. I'll get you something, don't worry," he soothes.

And — then what?

She hears him turn, walk away. Her eyes stay closed until he does. Even still, she has to remind herself to breathe. It is a necessary function, and she needs to. To relax. To exhale.

Finally, she does.

The ragged movement feels remarkably like relief.

As if he can hear her, he turns, pivoting.

"Oh, almost forgot."

He gestures sharply at the ceiling. As if in slow motion, his long, delicate fingers curl, retracting into a hard fist, and the dangling spider crumples in on itself like a discarded wad of paper, each leg contorting one at a time, breaking backward until the animal is a tight and tiny ball. Broken and scrunched and still.

His hand unfurls, and he casually swipes it across his face, like he's swatting away a fly. The spider, the web, and the dust vanish cleanly into nothing, as if they'd never been there at all.

"There," he says, smiling. "That's better."

* * *

 _ **A/N:**_

hi, everyone. i'm back! in a week(-ish)! this isn't my usual, but let's enjoy it while it lasts. huge shoutout goes to emilybelham on tumblr for looking over this chapter like an absolute internet goddess. thank you for your very generous help and support!

and thanks as well to everyone who's reviewed. i'm super grateful. it's seriously mind-boggling to me that only about 5% of readers review, since i've always been a dedicated reader/reviewer, but, you know, it's never too late to switch ranks, y'all. maybe we can even turn that 5% into 6% this chapter. #daretodream

til next time.


	9. Chapter 8

**A/N below.**

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

 _Chapter Eight_

* * *

She knows what he is.

He's a monster. The type that likes to play with its food. Likes to disturb and unnerve and maintain the upper hand.

The display — what he just did — it's calculated intimidation. And it works.

It just doesn't work that well.

"Will you teach me?" she asks, blurting out the words as soon as she's processed his actions, before he's even able to turn back around.

He visibly jolts, swallowing down a ' _What?'_ that's nonetheless apparent in the stiffness of his shoulders and suddenly stilted take of his smile. It's almost comical, she thinks, his reaction to her bluntness. Would be, if the stakes weren't so incredibly high.

She persists, though, as she knows she must, playing by ear and by instinct. It's gotten her this far, after all.

"Wandless magic," she explains, flapping her hand across the cot in rough imitation of his recent gesture, stubbornly ignoring her revulsion. "Your _Evanesco_. I'd like to learn how to cast it wandlessly."

He stops smiling.

"And silently," she adds.

He's looking at her like he's never seen her before, and it's all she can do not to meet his eyes. They're hungry, and they're wanting, inhabiting the devastatingly beautiful constellation of his face like twin black holes. Deep and dark and dangerous. Their gravity so strong that not even light can escape.

How, exactly, does she think she can keep herself out of his path? From being consumed?

He blinks.

"You do?" he asks, voice oddly flat. The room seems to echo his words back to her.

"Yes."

Blunt and honest lies, that's the way to go. He never seems to know what to do with blunt and honest.

He looks down at her, and it's worse than usual, because he is literally looking down at her; she's still flat on her back, not even propped against pillows, and he is looming over her.

Well, she can change one of those things, at least.

She attempts to sit up, pushing against the cot for leverage. The mattress is thin, as ever, and her arms are weak, as ever, but she should be able to if she just -

Pain pulses through her midsection, racketing through her like a scream. She winces, hissing, and falls back to the mattress.

"Be careful!" he bites out sharply. Shock and worry play across his features in a fierce, unsettling way.

"I'm fine," Hermione says through gritted teeth. "Just maybe — the potion first?" It's less of an ask and more of a command, a no-nonsense articulation, the pain speaking through her.

He pauses, hovering at what must be her tone, as if actually considering not getting it merely because she asked him to. _Told_ him to.

Surely he isn't that contrary?

He shakes his head slightly, hardly perceptibly, then nods. "Of course," he replies graciously before turning. "One moment."

One moment. One moment. One moment and then another moment and then another and another and another.

She waits.

As she does, she notices details about this place, about herself, taking in her surroundings, consciously absorbing the setting of her story for the first time in a disturbingly long time.

From this prone position on the cot, her perspective is limited. The pads of her fingers brush lightly over the mattress, taking in a drastic, distinct change in texture. The wool blanket is missing. In its place is a roughspun linen sheet that's stiff but softer, certainly, than the previous covering and mostly in one piece.

Limp, tangled curls press into her cheek as she turns her head to look at the sheet. It's beige, and nondescript. Her hair, though. Her hair is loose and thick, tumbling over her shoulders and behind her neck. It's hot, irritating, and she wishes more than she can say that she could pull it into a ponytail or pile it high on top of her head.

She can't begin to imagine how greasy and matted it must be. How long it will take to brush and clean.

Hermione sighs, rolling her head over to look down at herself awkwardly, her chin pressing into her chest.

And, speaking of clean, her clothes — the soiled ones, dirty and bloody and tattered beyond repair — are gone. _They're gone._ As in, not on her body.

How could she not have noticed? How could she -

Did he - ?

Of course he did.

He changed her. Unbuttoned her jeans. Took off her jumper. Removed her shoes. Put her in this - this _shift_. An old-fashioned dress. A nightgown?

Something. It's something. She doesn't know what. But it's unstructured, absurdly nice, a pristine white cotton crepe fit for summer, light and cool and barely noticeable against her skin, and, most importantly, _not hers_.

She swallows thickly, a frenzied worry gathering in her throat. Her fingers shake, tentative but determined, as they migrate down, skimming against the thin white fabric, along the curve of her hip.

A piece of that unnameable worry breaks, dissolving, as she feels the elastic line of her underwear.

Practicality, then. A nightgown. Or hospital gown, for lack of a better garment.

"For you."

She nearly jumps at his silent, sudden appearance.

A vial of thick golden liquid is thrust in front of her, an apparent offering for her inspection, but it's just for show. He's not going to hand it to her; he's going to give it to her.

With innate grace, he leans down fluidly, left hand sliding behind her head and lifting her up slightly, gently, just enough to tilt her head forward and keep her from choking on what's to come. She closes her eyes immediately, forced to by his close proximity.

With her eyes shut, her other senses come to the fore. Smell and touch and taste. Star Grass and pickled Murtlap Tentacles and - and him. This close, with his arms extended, she can't not.

He smells clean. Not the kind of clean that comes from soap but from absence. A clean of nothing, a clean that comes from magicking away stains and stenches and inconvenience.

The vial brushes against her lips, and she opens her mouth obediently, swallowing the potion with only slight discomfort. Even still, though, as she swallows, she picks up another faint scent, a trace of perspiration, of body odor building.

The smell — the natural reek of sweaty boy — is absurdly, dangerously comforting.

It means he is human, no matter how hard he tries to be other.

"Very good," he murmurs, as she finishes off the potion, and he lowers her slowly to the mattress. "That should help soon."

She concentrates on the potion until he backs away. Murtlap Tentacles, Star Grass, Bicorn Horn. Mentally cataloging the smells and tastes of her written instructions, all those tick marks ago, and also a number of things she didn't write down.

"Bitterroot plant?" she asks, licking her lips and opening her eyes. "Jobberknoll feathers?"

"Yes," he answers with a pleased, approving tone. "They should help soothe the hurt that's — what did you call it?" He pauses. " _Pushing_."

"Thank you," she replies for lack of a better thing to say, letting the pain-killing potion work its way through her system, already quelling a large part of her very real hurt.

Thanking him. She's thanking him.

"You're welcome, Hermione," he says. "Now, if you've no objections, let's begin with the lesson, shall we?"

What?

She nearly asks him that — what he's talking about, feeling witless and blurry-headed, before catching herself. Wandless magic. Of course.

She's done it before. A quick _Confundus_ or two, but nothing like what he's performed in front of her. It couldn't hurt to learn more, and if he really wants to teach her and keep her — from her wand, from others, for himself — then some wandless magic could actually _help_. Perhaps his lectures can be tweaked a bit, poked and prodded toward hubris.

He takes her silence as acquiescence and proceeds to ask, "What do you already know about it?"

She's a little surprised that he's asking instead of telling, as is his normal wont. She considers the question, though, and wracks her brain — the parts that are working. When she opens her mouth, words start forming into slow sentences that spill out almost of their own volition.

"Well, I have done a bit of reading on the subject," she begins cautiously, looking up at him. He nods his head, as if encouraging her to continue, and she swallows before speaking. "Wands are a European invention, created millennia ago. The Ollivanders, for instance, are noted to have been practicing wandlore professionally since 382 B.C., and likely even earlier. But there were witches and wizards before then," she goes on, voice gaining strength as she falls into the comforting cadence of fact, "and outside of Europe, on other continents, in countries like America and Uganda, developed magical populations created and practiced spells wandlessly almost exclusively until as late as the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

"Uganda's largest school Uagadou along the Mountains of the Moon, for example, encourages and develops the practice of wandless magic even now, with many students preferring to use hand gestures and pointing motions instead of wands. The development of similar motions across cultures has been noted by many historians, and of those historians, a large subset hypothesize an innate connection to such movements at the core of all casting."

She stops talking, almost energized at the end of it, because it's fascinating stuff, really. Counter to her experiences with magic, to be sure, but then again, when does one individual experience make up the whole of what's possible?

He doesn't agree with her. Doesn't say anything, really. He just stares, and discomfort and embarrassment build in her.

"Did you not know about that?"

"I knew it," he answers immediately, "I just don't see how that information is relevant to helping you cast wandlessly." His tone sounds genuine enough, but she picks up the patronizing elements of it.

He keeps wanting her to speak, and then any time she says anything he changes his mind.

She lifts her jaw. "It's helpful in a number of ways, actually. First, the historical precedents prove that it is indeed a possible practice in many individuals, not just the best and brightest witches and wizards, as current popular belief would lead one to think. Secondly, the pointing and gesturing aspect to most casting implies a necessary movement similar, though not exactly identical, to casting with a wand, which is helpful in practical applications. Thirdly, the trick seems to -"

"There's no trick to it," he interrupts, voice confident and absolute. "You just have to focus. Will it to be so, because it is so."

Hermione sucks in a breath, trying not to take or cause offense.

She's kept her breathing steady and shallow this whole time. Slow, barely-there exhalations that limit the movement of her torso, the aggravation of her wound, because she can't afford to aggravate anything else. But goodness, does she want to.

"Okay," she proceeds cautiously. " _Will_. Will it with a spell?"

"No," he responds with a hint of what might be actual passion, moving back and forth by her bedside, choosing to pace rather than sit. "Not necessarily. Spells, like wands, are conduits. Tools that channel magic, help form and focus complex energies, but, again, they are conduits. They are not magic. They do not _create_."

It's an interesting distinction. Not exactly something she's considered before.

Many countries and cultures do not rely on wands, as she's said. But spells? To dismiss them? That seems an extreme assertion.

"It all comes back to will," he continues, gesturing with his hands as he walks. "Will and power. A strong, determined wizard can exert control on more than many can fathom, can conquer that which most are not even capable of dreaming of. He just has to focus."

"Yes, but on what?"

"On his magic," he replies simply, as easily as breathing, then begins launching into a description of magic and magical cores and the things that can be done, can be controlled, can be conquered.

It's fascinating. And it's terrible. And it's so very, very enticing.

She closes her eyes as she considers focus and want and will.

Focuses on wanting. But on wanting what?

What can she will that can possibly be done?

Her heart immediately goes to health and happiness and home and Harry.

But no. Those are impossible things. Ridiculous given her situation.

Something she's done before, then. Something easy. A test.

Her eyes close tighter as she tunnels in on that want. _The_ want. _Her_ want. She feels it, her first conscious brush with magic, light and buoyant, like a feather floating through the air.

A part of her longs to raise her hand, to chase after the motion with her very self. To point, as she knows is often done. But even if she had physically been able to, which she isn't, she shouldn't _need_ to. The body can help in all kinds of matters, particularly the magical, but ultimately it's just for show.

She bites the inside of her lip. Focuses. Really, truly focuses. There is a hint of something brilliant and beautiful shining within her. A swirling of incandescence that burns like joy, white and blue and black. It flares at her notice, becoming clearer and clearer and -

"Stop that!"

Her eyes fly open in shock. She's jerked away, rifted from the burning light, both by his sharp words and a quick slap to her cheek. In the background, she hears glass clatter to the ground.

He's frowning. Scowling at her as he retracts his hand.

"You're too weak to do magic without hurting yourself," he scolds, sharp and commanding, like a master to a dog. He looms further over the bed. "You aren't to do anything but listen as I explain the theory, understand?"

It takes her a second to fully comprehend, but then -

How dare he!

She feels - well, she feels _furious_. She _is_ furious, and has been. Helpless and hurt and frustrated and _furious_.

He hadn't physically hurt her. The slap had just been a pat, really. But that's also not exactly the point, is it?

"Why are you doing this?" Hermione snaps roughly, officially tired of this game they're playing.

She is fed _up_. Calling it quits. Done in so many ways.

 _Damn the fucking consequences_.

His face shutters, becoming motionless and unreadable, and he looks down his nose at her, his height and her prone state compounding their current power differentials to a ludicrous degree.

He tilts his head as if considering her question. "Because you asked me to," he answers.

"No," she responds forcefully, teetering on the edge of a breakdown, caught in an impossibly dangerous situation, unable to move. "Not that. _This_. Me. Why are you doing _this_? Why do you have me here? Why are you healing me?"

He raises a brow, even more patient, more polite, more clueless as she falls further in the opposite direction. "Would you rather I didn't?" he asks.

She nearly screams.

This is why children throw fits, isn't it? The world gets too mean and too cruel and too much, and they're without the tools to take it in. To fight back.

"Of course not," she says, the words ripping from her throat as she glares up in the general direction of his forehead. "I just want to know what's going on. How long you plan to keep me here."

"I won't harm you," he assures her, casually slipping his hands into his pockets, fumbling for his wand perhaps. "I seek answers as well, as I'm sure you remember."

Remember. _Remember._ Isn't that one of the magic words she's been teeter-tottering around?

"You're avoiding my questions," she bites out.

"And you've avoided mine," he replies easily, instantly.

His calm demeanor nearly tears her apart.

"Is there any, any way you'll give me an honest answer?" she asks, already knowing it's rhetorical, her frustration bleeding into a whine.

Emotion seeps through, then. He sneers at her tone, as haughty and dismissive as the rich pureblood she knows he is not. "This conversation is beginning to grow tiresome, Hermione."

Agency, that's what children lack. And they know it, and so they cry and hit and scream, doing anything they can to exert control, to feel like a person in a world that tells them they're not.

She won't get an honest answer. Not from him. Not intentionally.

But she'll get one all the same.

 _Damn the fucking consequences._

She reaches deep into herself, down and down into the white and blue and black. Finds it almost instantly. A rage and a joy.

When she does, she continues forward with her sudden, half-baked plan, willful and reckless, locking eyes with him. Looking at him, diving straight into his orbit. His gravity. It's like the whole damn universe exists in his dark black eyes.

Dark black eyes that widen a fraction, and a fraction too late.

" _Legilimens!"_ she screams.

And it works.

* * *

 **A/N:** hello again, friends.

this chapter comes to you courtesy of a couple sleepless nights and some great proofreading via emilybelham and justcourbeau. they're both lovely and on tumblr and you should all go say hi.

hope to hear what you guys think of this chapter. (i'm talking to you, 300+ people following this story.) review replies for the last chapter are coming very soon, if i haven't gotten to yours already.

til next time.


	10. Chapter 9

**A/N** **below**.

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree  
**

 _Chapter Nine  
_

* * *

She's going to die.

Oh god, she's going to _die_.

She sees herself — dying, that is — a vision through his eyes. Dying, again and again, over and over: splayed on a rug, trapped in a bed, spread out in a field. Blood and guts and human stuff.

A fragile body, and a frightening mind.

The visions rush past, compressed and looping — sallow skin, wracking lungs, a person-shaped husk. Brittle bird bone ribs and a noose-like rope of purple scar tissue.

The images happen simultaneously, and it's _her her her_. Dead and dying.

She can't, though.

She can't die. Didn't die and _won't_.

It's not real.

Or, it's real, but only to a certain point; a twisting hinge of fate.

Her body on a table. In a lab.

A shell. A mistake. Such an utter, utter _waste_ , and she is clambered over and uncrumpled, then, on the cot, and two long fingers fumble, feeling along the juncture of her chin and throat, and oh, but there is such an overwhelming urge to _push_.

Hermione reels back and goes nowhere, like she's just thrust her head under a waterfall and tried to open her eyes. There's water, and there's pressure, and yes, surely it's wet, but can she see?

It's a deluge.

There's a snake in the grass. A bird in the hand.

A voice is screaming, and it isn't hers.

A wardrobe, then a toffee tin. A dusty old harmonica. A thimble, crushed and thin.

Underneath, a shiny black ring, and inside, a body. Two of them.

Why? _Why_ does he always get the broken things?

It isn't _fair_ , this feeling. It's too much. Time. Memories. Blood.

Too much blood, and it doesn't stop.

Some boundaries are not meant to be breached, no matter how possible it may be to do so.

Memories, thoughts, feeling. It's not one thing happening after another in rapidfire sequence. It's _everything_ — everything happening all at once, all the time. Layers upon layers.

She wonders if this is how it always works — _Legilimens_. ( _Occlumens_.)

She doesn't think so. It shouldn't, from what she's read. From what Harry said of Professor Snape. It's more so memories that play out like movies, convenient little tapes that treat a train of thought like a sequence. A scene. Admittedly, Harry hadn't exactly said _much_ , but —

And then it happens.

And there she is. Again, in a silvery swirl.

Small wrists slammed to the ground by larger, paler hands. There's a crunch of grit and dirt. A touch that flares. An overmastering sense of rightness. Of want. Like calling to like, what it is to _be_ , wholly — but not quite. So close to whole that it's never been so far.

And at the same time, all the time, there is a bottomless aching feeling that gnaws as it oozes, black like ichor. The watery fetid discharge of a wound that's spreading, swirling. Expanding in the most dreadful, fearsome way.

Fear as a motivator is nothing new. Study harder, read more, run faster. It pushes, and it bends. She knows it. Recognizes it quite intimately. But this?

This isn't _fear_. It's terror.

Death is coming. Death is here.

And oh, it swells like the rising tide.

Hermione grasps at this kernel of truth like a buoy in a maelstrom. She pulls, as if maybe — just _maybe_ — she can heft herself out of this torrent and finally _see_ , finally _breathe_ , instead of just being beaten, battered and submerged.

And then it happens.

And there she is. Again, again, _again_ , in a silvery swirl. She rises, out and above.

In a breath, there's Tom, tall and straight-backed like a soldier. His hair is combed. His white shirt is immaculately pressed, the sleeves rolled to a neat, elbow-high cuff.

A glistening bead of sweat trickles down the nape of his neck, pooling with countless others at the lip of his collar. Similar lakes form, saturating the crease of his arm and the small of his back. It is a regrettable inconvenience of the summer, this heat — and, in exchange, his response to it — but ultimately a small one. One he studiously ignores in favor of something so much more and so much worse.

Down and before him is a small and sunken thing; the anatomy of an impossible mistake.

It is stripped bare, naked save for strange floral underclothes and a truly disturbing amount of blood.

Tom's face gives away nothing. Sure, there are bags under his eyes, as if he hasn't slept in days, and his lips are dry, peeling slightly. His nose, too, is a notable marker, though it is of the past, not the present; once perfect, it's now swollen but healing, a glaring yellow-y purple bruise.

No, there is little outward interest on his mask of a face. His hands, though — they tell far more. They tremor, shaking with a barely concealed something.

Anger, perhaps. Exhaustion, certainly.

Weakness, regardless.

He glares at the tremors for a long moment, rotating his hands before him. Then somehow, either by magic or sheer force of will, the shaking stops.

His hand, as still as any surgeon's, extends down and plunges into a bucket of cool water. A sodden strip of white cotton cloth emerges. He wrings it out with slow precision, twisting and tightening it like a hand around a neck.

He will fix it. Will get rid of the mess.

His movements are utilitarian and practiced; punctuated by frequent wringing, tightening _twists_.

Oh, he is _furious_.

He pivots the body when necessary, lifting a leg or turning an arm, like it is merely a cauldron that needs scrubbing. He is thoroughly methodical in his approach.

Time collapses.

The cotton rag is a dripping, gummy pink.

The body is clean.

Tom quivers, a cage that barely contains.

His fingers shake and slide almost-but-not-quite over the body's midsection, ghosting along its side, counting the too many too-visible ribs.

" _This_ is what I'm stuck with?" he whispers. " _This_ , whatever you are."

Remnants of pinkish water dot his hand. Another shake, and one dot drips from the tip of his index finger, splatting on the skin below. There's a sharp, hiccuping intake of breath.

He snatches his hand away like a person caught.

What a pitifully frail thing.

A ragged wheeze comes from it, reverberating through the room, as present as an aftershock. He sneers and steps back.

He grabs the bucket of water and hauls it to the cabin door. When he returns, there is more white fabric bunched in his hands, which are now clean and dry. He wastes no time when he returns, carefully lifting the body up by the shoulders. He guides limp limbs through sleeves of white cotton crepe, through the nightgown that he liberated from the other house, and it is a trial, truly, more difficult than expected to dress an uncooperative body. To achieve a modicum of presentability.

Finally, though, it's reached.

The white fabric is an improvement, certainly, though anything would be. Casings matter.

He contemplates cutting off the hair, for there is far too much, and it is in a riotous, perhaps even irreparable, state. Instead, he straightens the gown, pulling it down as far as it will go, then farther.

A twitch. More ragged breathing. A jerk.

The aftershocks weren't aftershocks, after all. Merely foreshadowing. Foreshocks.

And there it goes, and here it comes — a wracking cough, terrible and wet, and his shoulders somehow stiffen further. It's time. _Again_.

His face contorts.

Rage and terror meet, swelling.

A dozen potion bottles line the bedside table, just out of reach of any haphazard thrashing or ill-timed convulsions. Tom locates a small green one. Unstoppers it.

Death has no place here. He will conquer it. Will cast it out. He knows this, as sure as sin. It will happen, because he wills it so.

The potion is shoved in at the next cough, and his steady, careful fingers stroke across a long, bent throat, somehow coaxing the liquid down.

"You _will not die_ ," he commands, voice resolute. There is no response, but he speaks again anyway, flicking away a strand of dirty brown hair as he does. "What an abominable mistake."

He brushes another irredeemably filthy curl aside, this one further up, across the temple. His hand lingers.

Wide, brown-black eyes fly open, wild and unseeing, and clash into his.

She is flung back and falls under the water. A scream rings in her ears, and it is not her own.

* * *

A heart beats in her chest. Air courses through her lungs. Light hits her eyes.

Was reality always this... much?

No. Certainly not.

Another ray of light, and pain sings behind her eyes like a pickaxe striking. The light is white, bright and blinding, so much so that Hermione nearly misses Tom's hands flying out to her shoulders and grabbing her by the nightgown.

"Are you stark raving _mad_?" he snarls. His nostrils flare on a sharp exhale.

Hermione breathes deeply and tries not to cry as the pickaxe swings again. The unmistakable sudden onslaught of a migraine resonates in her, drowning out the scream, before she can be pushed further into the mattress.

It's been maybe a second. Likely a minute.

He is pale and trembling. His eyes are sparking and stunned. (His nose is fully healed.)

" _What do you think you're doing?"_

So intense, he is, like a spitting cat. Everything is so intense. She closes her eyes.

He exhales raggedly. "That you would - that you would _dare_ \- "

"I'm - " she croaks, then stops, voice breaking, not from his brutish attempts at intimidation but because her head is likely to split in two on her next breath.

His hands grip her shoulders tighter, and Hermione can tell he wants to shake her like a doll.

"What? You're _what_?"

"I'm a person," she says firmly. Tears leak from her clenched eyes. If there was a way to fling this pain from her mind, to cut her head from her body, she would, but there isn't, and she needs to say this to him. To express it clearly. "I'm a person, not a thing. Not a body."

She squints up at him, can see the exaggerated contrast of his dark form against the too-bright light, can see that same dark form rear back at her pronouncement. She continues, pushing.

"I know you have kept and will continue to keep me breathing. But I. Am not. A thing."

He looms over her. "You're a nightmare made flesh."

Nightmare. She nearly laughs.

That's nothing new. She has been called as much before, by Ron and others. It feels so bizarre coming at her from this person in this place. But she thinks this monster really means it — in a very literal sense. She feels the same for him.

"I'm a person," she repeats, "like you."

He bristles, and ignores her. "I don't care _what_ you are. If you try that again, I'll kill you," he says fiercely, in a low, dark voice.

It doesn't scare her. Not now.

"You won't," she says. They both know it's true.

His hands disappear from her shoulders, and he rises in a fury that feels more like a huff than a stormcloud. He stalks off to some corner of the room, out of her awareness, and she can't find it in herself to care because the onslaught of a migraine has turned into the very real throws of a migraine, and she can hardly see for the pulsing behind her eyes. This light will carve her hollow.

She presses the bony heel of her hands into her eyes, which is ineffectual at providing more than the barest whisper of relief, but removing them now seems impossible. Certainly worth any potential damage to her corneas from the pressure. Inundated as she is, she almost forgets him entirely in a fresh wave of pain, and it is of course that second he returns. Of course it is. It wouldn't do for her to focus on something other than him, now would it?

"You try that again," he says, strained yet furious, "and _you_ will kill you."

She does not refute his claim. Her mind is screaming too much to form syllables, much less an argument.

"Do you hear me?"

She clenches her eyes further in response.

Suddenly, his hands grab her wrists and pull them from her face. She groans.

He's leaning over her, so close she can feel his shadow. She opens her eyes.

" _Do you hear me?_ " he repeats, as if nothing in the world is more important than what he has to say. "Attempting that kind of magic, now, will _kill_ you."

His brown-black eyes are wide, and they bore into her own. He is scared, and not for her.

Another stab of pain, and she jerks.

His hands tighten around her wrists, enough they will surely leave bruises, and through the all-consuming haze of pain, Hermione produces a sneer all her own.

"We're _all_ going to die, Tom."

He drops her hands like they've burned him. Looks at her again for a long, hard moment.

" _Not you,"_ he says, finally. "And not me."

She wants to vomit and thinks she might.

The pain returns. She turns her head, buries her face in a pillow, and prays for it to end. For this all to end.

For a numberless time since she came to this hellscape, this _nightmare_ , she feels like she is dying.

But she can't die. Not her.

Tom Riddle says she won't.

* * *

 **A/N:** How've y'all been this last year? Busy? Me too.

(For those still watching this space, I'm still writing when I can, I can't guarantee timely updates, and I love hearing your thoughts.)

Posting and running. Hugs & love.


	11. Chapter 10

**A/N below.**

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree  
**

 _Chapter Ten_

* * *

The migraine subsides, as all things do.

Nothing lasts forever.

.

* * *

.

It leaves like a lifting fog. Slowly at first, then suddenly, like it had never been there at all.

Abruptly, there is more to the world than biting pain. More to the world than her consumed, overwrought senses would have her believe.

Time has passed. It always does.

(She hurts until she doesn't. That's the way of it, too.)

Unceremoniously, she stumbles forward and back into rational thought. It's like vertigo as she recalls details she had lived through but only vaguely registered. Like retroactive awareness.

Mostly, the awareness centers on Tom.

During the shroud of her migraine and in the direct afters, she knows he had been dutiful with her care. There when she'd needed him, feeding her potions like clockwork, then silently slipping back and away, like smoke dispersing within a set confines — touching everything but remaining untouchable in turn.

He'd been attentive, yes. Competent, certainly. But despite all of his efforts, he had not been alone; Death still clings to this plane. She can feel it, even now, like a presence in the room.

To be fair, she's not exactly getting worse. By some measures, namely the lack of a migraine and the ability to remain conscious for hours at a time, her situation could even be labeled as improved.

But she isn't well. And she isn't herself. And the compulsory bedrest is driving her insane.

It doesn't surprise her, that it's difficult. She has never taken well to idleness. She's a person that has to go, has to learn, has to do. And this period of convalescence — it's not exactly like when she had the flu at age seven, or returned from petrification at age thirteen. There's no library book to teach her how to knit, no Madame Pomfrey to look the other way as she furiously caught up on coursework.

(Reflecting on that period now, her post-petrification stay in the hospital wing, she's struck by the many other uncanny similarities to her current situation. Unresponsive bodies and lost time. Snakes. Dangerous — even deadly — eyes. And the worst, most glaring consistency: _him_.)

 _He_ continues to do battle over the dented pewter cauldron.

Nestled in the corner of the shack, the cauldron boils, and the cauldron bubbles, and Tom is incredibly efficient, approaching each precise cut and careful stir with the steady intensity of a bomb squad technician or a student sitting their NEWTs.

As he should. The potions will, after all, keep her alive.

And what a state it is, to be kept alive. Time moves forward, but there's no rising action. No falling action, either. Just the dangling hope of stasis and the heavy-weighted fear of stagnation.

Still, while she is by no means healed, especially from her recent foray with wandless magic, the mind-numbing, crazy-making pain that has been her near-constant companion seems to have retreated somewhat, leaving her with what feels like an empty, unclouded mind. No distractions.

She has, of course, already come up with a dozen different escape routes and contingency plans for how to get out of this house, away from this man, back to the Ministry. But barring unexpected Auror intervention or the sudden use of her legs, there is no way out. _Nothing_ to do but wait.

Her mind whirs and whirs and whirs with just how much nothing there is to do.

So Hermione comes to what she thinks is an exceedingly logical decision. She decides to ask him for work. She even prepares a five-minute speech on why it's a good idea. How it will be better for them both.

It takes her ten minutes to summon the nerve.

"Tom," she begins cautiously, calling to him from flat on her back. She can't even prop herself up on a pillow because of the pressure it would cause to her stomach. It's yet another thing that frustrates her to no end.

"Hmm?" He glances over at her.

Hermione swallows. From this angle, Tom appears taller and thinner than she knows him to be. It's like looking up at the branches from the base of a tree.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" Hermione asks, voice scratchy from misuse. "Maybe with prepwork or note-taking or keeping track of potion regimens?"

She clears her throat, then inhales, ready to justify her request, but she doesn't get the chance.

"Actually, I do have something," Tom says immediately, surprising her. He puts down his ladle and casually wipes his hands on his trousers, like this is normal. "If you're sure."

Hermione nods, not wanting him to change his mind. Not expecting it to be this easy.

"I am," she says out loud, to be sure.

Tom nods back, looking at her a little funny. "Okay," he says, "then I have just the thing."

And there it is. Just like that.

The _thing_ turns out to be a wide wicker basket stacked to the brim with Polypody ferns.

He approaches with the basket, looking tall and slightly oblong, like a study in foreshortening. She has no idea where it came from, where anything has come from; for all she knows and for all she can see, it could have been gathered that morning while she was sleeping or summoned from mid-air two seconds ago.

Regardless of its origins, he still sets it on the bedside table all the same, blessedly within her reach. Then he pivots, like he's on a swivel, and leaves.

Hermione doesn't watch him go, fixated as she is on the basket. The small thing she asked for that she didn't quite believe she was going to get. Almost of its own accord, her right hand reaches out and lightly strokes the limp tangle of ferns like one might pet a stray cat.

For a moment, Hermione can't help but sit with the plants, hand splayed among them, allowing the verdant green to wash over her. The color sparks something in her, and mere seconds pass before she gives in and grabs one. Before she brings it close.

The first cutting is larger than a handheld fan, but it weighs next to nothing. Picking it up is like lifting her own hand, which is to say not exactly easy but certainly within her current limits.

And as for the cutting itself, each frond blade is long. Each leaflet complex.

The task before her promises to be tedious and moderately consuming.

It's perfect, really, and she basks in it. It's like a forest, here in this house, in this room, on this jail cell of a bed, and uncaring that Tom is likely watching her every move, Hermione drops the fern until the lush green of it kisses her face, spanning the entirety of what she can see.

It's cool, and it's smooth, and it smells like a memory. She closes her eyes and breathes in deep.

It helps. And it also doesn't. And anyway, it doesn't matter, because she has a task now. Something to _do_.

After one last long inhale, Hermione lifts the cutting and begins to strip the fronds, one by one, as single-minded as a child picking petals off of a daisy.

There's no instruction given to her, almost as if he trusts her to know exactly what needs doing.

And, of course, she _does_ know. She's read _One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi_ so many times that she can practically recite it from memory.

Separate rhizomes from fronds, preserving root systems. Remove fiddleheads. Pluck individual pinnule from leaflets, taking great care to keep them fully intact. Conserve each respective stipe and axis for separate potions and herbology work.

She knows this.

Does Tom know she knows this?

It could be exhaustion on his part that he hadn't protested her request. Hadn't given her instructions. She hasn't exactly seen him sleep, and it's not like there's a spare bed hiding in the room. He could be running on empty, too.

More likely, Hermione thinks, is that it's a play at civility — and certainly not one she feels inclined to trust.

She frowns. Picks apart another bit of green.

Or perhaps it's everything rolled into one. Trust and civility and exhaustion. Things can be "and," not just "either". One doesn't have to preclude the other.

Not that his motives really matter at this point. She has a task.

Carefully separated piles grow, leaflet by leaflet. She pours herself into the tediousness of it all. Can't help but marvel.

Ferns are such mundane things, honestly. Large and ancient, littering the countryside. Years of camping in Wye Valley and the Forest of Dean, and she had never really given them any mind. Before reading Phyllida Spore's book, she wouldn't have ever guessed these prehistoric plants carried magic, common as they are.

She turns another cutting, and the fronds spin, producing the barest whisper of a breeze against her cheeks.

She knows better now. The world is so much bigger and stranger and more magical than she ever thought.

Hermione shakes her head minutely, refocusing on the task at hand. On the plant _in_ her hand. She combs through its turning fan of leaves. Finds a lone fiddlehead hiding in the remnants of its root system.

She picks at it, grabbing it securely between her thumb and forefinger. There's resistance, some fight, but after another pinch and a sharp tug, it gives easily enough.

Bottom lip between her teeth, she turns the tiny thing, scrutinizing its intricate spiraled furling. It is bright green and oddly beautiful, the curling whole of it no larger than a snail's shell.

It's a younger green than the larger ferns, coiled so tightly, not yet ready to come out. Her thumb and forefinger twist so that she can see more of it, and it turns as she does. She brings it closer, and she turns it further, balancing her fingers on its smooth outer rim, and then her hand slips, and then she overcorrects, and then there's too much pressure, and then, before she can do anything at all, its rigid membrane splits with a wet, soft snap.

She swallows a sudden, unexpected sob.

The squished thing falls, hitting her chest.

Oh god.

Another shuddering intake of breath, and she nearly chokes. Fronds whip as the partially plucked fern swings down to cover her face. From the corner of her eye, she sees Tom stop what he's doing and glance over at her.

She doesn't care. She doesn't care.

She bites her lip and clenches her eyes, determined not to cry.

It's all in her head.

It is all in her head.

She inhales in quick, stuttering spurts, sucking in a lungful of stale, humid air filtered through the earthy fronds. It smells so very much like freshly mown grass.

Her shoulders shake.

Damp linen clings to her back, just as moisture-laden as the humid air, if not more so. Hermione bites her bottom lip again in order to keep her mouth closed, and a coarse layer of skin sloughs off between her teeth.

Things. So many tangible things.

She is present. She is here. Plucking Polybodys in 1940-something with Tom Marvolo Riddle.

She is. She is.

 _Get used to it. You are._

Hermione takes a deep breath, hiccuping through it.

She concentrates on breathing.

Her chest fights her, rising and falling in a rough staccato. The fern covers her face like a child's blanket in the night.

A minute later, and she's still breathing.

Another minute, and the fern slides down. Another minute, and she concentrates on plucking.

Another minute, and she thinks it's even working.

Which is perhaps why Tom takes that minute to break the silence. Of course he does.

"What happened to you, Hermione?" he asks, and it's so nonchalant that the past few minutes of concentrated calm nearly wash away.

She tenses, breath held and mental alarms blaring.

The question is too open-ended, too much of a trap.

Seconds pass before she responds, and even then, all she stitches together is an evenly spoken, "I'm sorry?"

Tom doesn't seem to mind. "What happened to you?" he repeats patiently.

Hermione wants to laugh.

This man is not patient. This man is not kind.

Perhaps that's what pushes her reply.

She drags her free hand over her forehead. "I believe it was from the wandless magic, like you initially surmised. Why? Did you have another theory?"

 _Watch it._

It comes to her immediately, an internal knee-jerk reaction in his voice. She practically hears him say it.

He doesn't say it, of course.

Instead, he clears his throat slightly, like it's really no matter to him at all, and gestures to her stomach. "No, I mean your abdomen," Tom clarifies. "What happened there? It couldn't have been an accident."

"It wasn't." Hermione's fingers pick at another fiddlehead. She removes it. Places it in its designated pile. "I was cursed. I don't know the spell."

She doesn't say more.

She'll tell the truth, but he hasn't earned any answers.

Riddle nods, like she's given him valuable information, then pulls out a solid white mortar and pestle and settles it on his workstation. A handful of what might be pink peppercorns clink into the white marble bowl, one after another, before the pestle follows them to the surface. He twists it, baring down with considerable weight. The peppercorns pop, and the pestle scritches horribly against the marble bowl. The sound connects directly to her spine.

"I imagine whoever did that wanted to harm you terribly."

"Yes," Hermione says after a moment, eyes fixed on her fingers. "I'd say that's a safe assumption."

"Wanted to kill you?" Tom presses. Another peppercorn pops.

"Perhaps," she replies steadily.

Hermione strips one last green stem. Sees a flash of purple fire.

Swallows thickly, then brushes it all away.

Most of the Polypody components are stacked in separate neat piles to her right. Stipes. Fiddleheads. Rhizomes. She'd been placing the stripped fronds in her lap, and they'd collected in a mound, piled high between the crevice of her thighs like a great green dune. She transfers them carefully, loose handful by loose handful, back to the large wicker basket.

She glances at Tom when she's finished, unsurprised to find he's staring straight at her.

Their eyes meet. The last time that happened comes back to her. Feels far too close for comfort.

She continues meeting his dark brown eyes anyway.

Tom tilts his head, and she could almost swear his lips twitch up slightly.

"Where do you sleep?" she asks.

Now Tom's lips really do move. He opens his mouth, then closes it. His dark eyes narrow.

" _Do_ you sleep?" she presses.

"Of course I do," he snaps. "Everyone does." His eyes flash, and he pauses. "I've been sleeping on the floor."

"Oh," Hermione says meaningfully. She looks away from him and back to the piles for a moment. "Ferns are done."

Tom lowers the pestle as gingerly as one might a knife, looking like he wants to burn a hole in something.

He approaches slowly, rigidly, but with each step, it's like he gains more control. The fire diminishes, the expression drops more and more. Eventually, his face is once again a mask. Or perhaps his mask is once again his face.

One of them is his natural state, and she isn't sure which.

Regardless, the room isn't that large, and he crosses it soon enough. This time around he comes closer, stopping when he's mere inches away from the cot, looming over her.

Before she can adjust to his presence, he crouches down, next to the wooden chair instead of in it, his long legs bent, his face hovering dangerously close to her own. Too close.

Tom focuses, seemingly intent on the piles she's laid out. Hermione's simply trying to get a handle on the sudden perspective shift, reminded of exactly how much her back is to the wall.

Still, he is methodical in his approach, taking his time, as if searching for fault.

For Hermione, it's the same.

His face is handsome, as ever. But the individual parts?

Hints of what will soon be dark, patchy stubble form on his chin and cheeks. Around his mouth.

His nose no longer appears as straight as it once did, the bridge bending almost imperceptibly to the right.

Under his eyes, the thin, sensitive skin is noticeably darker, puffy and swollen.

He blinks. His eyelashes are absurdly long.

"These look good, Hermione," he says. "Well done."

Moisture dots his brow, and it's unclear to her whether it's perspiration or potion fume condensation.

Maybe it's both.

Maybe it doesn't matter.

This close, she's finding it hard to look away.

"Thanks," she responds and doesn't know what else to say.

.

* * *

.

Tom leaves without saying another word, taking the potions ingredients with him.

Hermione determines not to let it throw her off.

She'd asked for a task. She'd been given a task. She'd completed her task. That's something.

She thinks about asking for another. Wants one — even needs it.

It's only logical, after all. Helping with the potions is just another way of helping herself. Having a hand in her own healing — it makes her feel better. Provides actual relief.

She stares up at the exposed rafters, at the tiny break in the ceiling, imagining the ferns as a piece of a whole and productive day. They're no book, but with them, her time hasn't been wasted. She can _do_.

Hopefully the next thing she does will be of a similarly consuming calibre.

Measuring. Chopping. _Reading_.

Magic, even, maybe. Sometime soon. Tomorrow, perhaps.

Today, _now_ , a potion bottle enters her field of view. A pale hand jutting out, extended above her.

Tom. Interrupting her mid-thought.

He holds out a large bottle of a clear colorless something, offering it to her without saying a word.

He's playing a part she's seen before. Aloof. Separate. Above.

 _Prat._

Hermione reaches up for the bottle, equally silent. She wishes she could float it down instead, thinking about how easy that should be. But she isn't ready to skirt the consequences of wandless magic. Not quite this soon.

She wavers. There are so many unspoken things in this shack, dancing between them and off of the walls. This isn't the kind of person she is. It's a twisting feeling, counter to her every impulse.

But she also won't be the first to say them. Not yet. Not quite this soon.

Instead, she fumbles with the bottle, large and more weighty than usual, and drinks until it's dry.

It tastes delicious.

It tastes like nothing.

She blinks slowly a couple of times, thinking of the next potion he's going to bring her, maybe another task she can ask for. He takes the bottle from her, and her hand lolls to the side, and then suddenly she's not blinking anymore.

And then suddenly it's dark.

Her first thought is that it's noticeably cooler than before.

Her second thought is that she must have fallen asleep.

Her third, fourth, and successive thoughts are all Tom.

Where is Tom?

Hermione scans the room cautiously, anxiously, searching for his pale form among the shadows, as if he might emerge at any moment. She hasn't been conscious during the night before, and the change in light creates something new. Entirely and dreadfully unfamiliar.

At least it isn't pitch black. By the large wooden front door, three squat candles burn, casting faint hints of flickering amber light through the space and across the earthen floor. Her eyes adjust, and the shadows stretch and dance, elongating with every passing second.

He's not by the door.

He's not by the workstation.

He's not by the cauldron.

He's not by the fireplace.

He's not here.

Not here.

Her heart beats faster.

Could it mean - ? Is he gone?

Is it - should she leave?

It takes her an embarrassingly long time to think to look down. He'd been sleeping on the floor by his own admission, after all.

Hermione scoots herself to the side of the mattress, going slowly so as to cause minimal damage, so as to make minimal noise. Hands curled around the bedsheet, neck turned at an awkward angle, she peers over the steep edge.

There's a mass on the ground. It moves.

Her heat spikes up in her throat, and she jerks back.

Which is, of course, a patently _stupid_ reaction, because it's exactly what she'd been looking for. Tom, the body, on the ground.

She calms her treacherous heart, staring up at what should be the rafters but is instead a wide expanse of inky black. Hovering. Waiting.

She frowns, hand over her heart, waiting for it to slow to a reasonable pace. She is always looking, looking, looking. Never doing. Never doing enough.

She will do more.

Steadying herself, she leans back to the edge. Peers over, inch by inch, careful not to let her hair fall over the mattress, careful not to breathe too loud.

He's curled up on his side. Because his back is against the cot, she can't make out his face, but his chest rises and falls with the slow, steady cadence of deep sleep. Locks of his wavy black hair are mussed, swept sideways and disheveled, echoing the darkness above her. She thinks she can make out his white collared shirt. The stark white of it is visible on his arms. On his shoulders, too. He's wearing it, even now, Hermione thinks, a bit judgmentally.

She stares, muscles straining from the awkward position, and tries to make out the brown of the hard-packed dirt floor.

It doesn't appear that he's sleeping on anything, and he certainly isn't covered by anything, not even a blanket.

Her hands dig into the lumpy mattress. She leans further.

She thinks she spots a hunk of some kind of dark fabric, bunched up in his hands, under his exposed head and neck.

She looks at his neck, at that long stretch of pale skin, and wonders if she could kill him.

.

* * *

.

 **A/N:**

Endless thanks to the living, breathing goddess that is **cocoartist** for the last minute beta. She is an absolute treasure. If you haven't read her epic fic _unsphere the stars_ yet, what are you even doing here? Just cancel your plans for the rest of the day and go read it immediately.

Also, to everyone who reviewed or messaged, y'all are the real MVPs. It's actually super helpful and signals to my dumb, irrational brain that I'm not boring you to tears with this fic; every "thanks for the update!" helps push out future chapters. (Also, lol, to those of you speculating about what's going on... know that you absolutely ARE giving me life, and I am enjoying every word.)

Til next time!


	12. Chapter 11

**A/N below, as usual.**

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

 _Chapter Eleven_

* * *

One quick stab to the carotid artery — that's all it would take. Surely she'd be able to generate enough force, if she used gravity to her advantage and fell on him. She'd just have to line up the fall and time it right, which she thinks she could do.

The weight and the shock of it; it could work. But what to stab him with?

There are potion bottles just barely within reach and not much else. She could break the glass on the table, then fall. It would have to be fast — he'd startle at the sound — and the glass would likely mangle her hand, but it'd be worth it. Better a hand than a neck.

She concentrates on his breathing, trying to see if he's really as asleep as he seems. Dim candlelight plays across his form like a wavering pulse.

Could she do it?

She looks up into the dark of the rafters. A cloud must have moved, because now she can see a handful of stars. Pinpricks of white in an expanse of hungry black.

She takes a deep breath.

Maybe. Maybe she could do it.

But would it work? That's less clear, and, arguably, the more important question.

He'd likely wake. At the sound. At her fall. At the shocking jagged glass biting through his neck. If it even makes it to his throat, to one of the two very particular arteries she'd have to hit. Her reaction time has never been equal to Harry's — who knows what it would be like now?

And assuming everything went according to plan, what then? She still needs potions. Potions to keep her alive. Potions she can't provide for herself.

But... do long-term needs really matter?

She could always find his wand after. Could find _her_ wand after.

Could call for help. A patronus sent to Hogwarts. To the Ministry. To Dumbledore. To anyone.

She _knows_ the wands are nearby. Perhaps even stashed in the bundled fabric he's cradling so close.

She could snatch back her wand. Could regain control.

Adrenaline pumps through her with every successive thought. A plan works its way into her system, pieces stitched together in bright red thread.

Each second she's closer to it. Each second is another chance he'll wake up.

It's high risk, yes, but higher reward. She could do this.

Her right hand connects with cool glass before she fully realizes it. The lip of the bottle feels smooth and hard, like it was made for her hand.

She can do this.

Hermione inches back inelegantly, scooting along the cot, breath held. She grasps the bottle securely, and when she reaches the right spot on the mattress, she raises it high above her head. Her knuckles are white. Her right arm shakes.

She only has one shot at this. It has to count.

She takes a deep breath, playing it through her mind in an endless second.

She exhales. She swings.

The potion bottle clangs against the bedside table, skidding against it at an odd angle, careening out of her hand. It hits the floor, and far from shattering like she expects, it bounces. Once. Twice. Like a clattering bouncy ball, it clinks its way to the corner of the shack, impossibly loud.

Tom moves from asleep to awake in an instant. He jumps to his feet, crouching low. A wild, intent expression plays across his face.

A wand is out, extended in his hand. It came from just where she'd imagined it would: the fabric underneath his head.

That same head turns quickly in the direction of the still-spinning glass bottle, seemingly tracking it by sound only, trying to find it in the dark. The cot creaks under her, and his head jerks, then re-corrects. He appears frantic. Nightblind.

Something inside Hermione's chest fractures.

Magic. It had been magic. The bottle spelled against breaking, as most potion vials are.

Tom's wand flicks out ever-so-slightly, though it seems like the harshest of movements. A bright white _Lumos_ floods the room.

Hermione flinches at the blinding flash. At her immense desperation and incredible stupidity.

She squints, watching Tom cross to the corner of the room, his steps protracted and rigid and broken, cased in a fury that sparks across his skin.

He bends down. Picks the bottle up.

"Drop something, Hermione?"

.

* * *

.

She wants to shrink back, but there is nowhere to go.

She should have prepared something. In case he'd woken up.

She hadn't.

And here she is. The risk instead of the reward.

"I had a nightmare," Hermione says tremulously — and with surprising conviction.

"Oh?"

"I was running, and I was scared, and it - it _flew_."

He's looking at her, chest moving heavily, bottle held tightly in his hand, like the enchantment really is the only thing keeping it from shattering. The _Lumos_ flares, pulsing in time with each ragged breath. He believes none of it.

"Flew from magic?" he asks.

"No," she says immediately. "Yes," she says a second later. She closes her eyes. "I don't know. I didn't mean to wake you."

"I bet you didn't."

She has to give him something. Something he wants.

What choice does she have? He knows, doesn't he?

His mind is like hers, she fears, only faster.

"I _didn't_ ," she says. "In my dream, it was him - Antonin - the man who cursed me. I thought he was here. I thought he was coming. I didn't know what I was doing, I only did."

Tom's breathing slows, his stiff dueling position relaxes. "And the bottle?"

"A beer bottle. At a shop. I was going to smash it."

"Effective," Tom says. Disdain drips off every syllable.

"I woke up at the sound, too," she continues, "but it was already flying. And then it was bouncing. And then - you were up."

Tom frowns. His _Lumos_ dims to a reasonable level, that of a torch instead of a high beam, and the difference is incredible; she can make out his disheveled hair and locked jaw and cruel, clever eyes. So much to take in, so much she has missed.

"I really didn't mean to wake you up. It's just - he was there. Dark hair and pale skin. And he could talk this time, and his wand just slashed, and there was purple flame, again, and I couldn't do anything to stop it, again, and -" she bites her tongue, feeling actually frantic, borderline frenzied. She's seen the fire enough. Then and since. It's like she's telling the truth, because in a way, she _is_.

Her eyes are wide and pleading when they meet his.

He exhales and lowers his wand.

"It's okay, Hermione. Calm down." Tom crosses over to her and places the bottle back on the table. "You don't have to say anything else tonight, alright?"

She nods, a slow tucking of her chin.

Tom pats her right hand. Crouches down.

Her heart is a rock in her throat, and his lips hover over the delicate shell of her ear, full and warm and far too close. "Good," he whispers, voice low and intent, "because you're a terrible liar."

He moves swiftly, so fast she can barely register it, his arm swinging out in a stunning sideways arc, catching each and every potion bottle on the table. A dozen glass vials fly out. Crash and clang against all four corners of the room.

There is not a sound — not a _movement_ — in this room except for the rolling vials. The cacophony of glass that just won't break.

She can't ever remember being this still.

"Goodnight, Hermione," Tom says.

A beat passes, where she remembers to breathe. Tom sits down, then disappears from view. Lying back, presumably to sleep.

She can't move. Unblinking, inert, she stares straight up. The stars peek out. Wink at her from behind a cloud.

"Goodnight, Tom," she whispers back, and she hates him. She hates him so, so much.

.

* * *

.

The next morning, she expects it to be like nothing had happened. And in a way, it is.

The sun is already out. Tom is already up. A single brewed potion sits, ready and waiting for her on the now-cleared bedside table.

But as she glances at the table, that's where all of the previous similarities start to combine and contort, fracturing like a broken carnival mirror.

The single potion. Expectant. Waiting. Red-colored and familiar.

Blood-Replenishing Potion, she'd have said. Just like all the times before.

But really, it could be _poison_ for all she knows. Bloodroot or worse. And she'd have just _swallowed_ it, no questions asked.

"Potion for you," Tom calls out, as if he can tell she's up, can read her mind.

Hermione picks up the stoppered bottle, her hand tightening around it. The heft of it triggers something in her from last night.

"What's this?"

He barely glances at her, distracted, his attention pulled between her and the bubbling cauldron in front of him. "What's what?"

" _This_ ," she says, shaking the potion in her hand.

Tom looks up, then looks thoroughly unimpressed. Almost sneers. " _That_ is Blood Replenisher, Hermione, like it's always been. Would you like me to describe its properties?" He pauses meaningfully. "It replenishes blood."

She ignores the insult. Ignores his tone. Feels a fire in her, kindling, and doesn't feel inclined to put it out. "How do I know that it is?"

Tom doesn't blink. "Because I say that it is," he says evenly. "Because you've had it before."

"And what's to say this one isn't different? What's to say you're telling me the truth?"

"Hermione," Tom says lowly, his tone a clear warning.

Her eyes flash. " _I said_ , and what's to say this one isn't different, _Tom_?"

" _Hermione_ ," Tom repeats, and his voice is tense, words strained. "You know very well that I will not let you die."

She knows? She _knows_?

The fire in her bursts forth in a wild, splintering lurch.

"I know _nothing_!" Hermione yells. "I know _nothing_ at all! I don't know why I'm here, and I don't know why you're helping me, and I certainly don't know what's in this potion!"

She hefts the bottle up and lobs it across the room. Flings it straight at his murderous, lying face.

Tom ducks, but the soaring glass doesn't even make it half the distance to him, its arc a pitiful and abbreviated swoop. It thuds on the earthen floor and rolls, hitting the worktable's legs with a slight crack.

Tom rises very slowly. Mouth taut and eyes blazing, he glares at her. "Are you quite done?"

"Go to hell."

The bottle spins on the ground.

Neither of them look away.

She doesn't care if this will be a Pyrrhic victory. If her crops burn, if her body suffers. She's waging war, and she's more than ready to salt the earth.

Tom summons the still-spinning potion bottle with a backwards flick of his wrist, eyes never leaving her own. Five quick strides, and he's across the room. He deposits the bottle roughly, pointedly, on the table. "Drink this. Now."

Hermione snarls at him, flinging out her own hand. The bottle topples over, as if pushed, and rolls off of the table.

Tom doesn't turn to watch it fall. He just holds out a hand, and the bottle pauses, hovering in mid-air.

Sweat beads on her forehead. Her hand shakes.

Salt the earth. She will _salt_ the earth.

"You won't be able to keep this up."

"And you won't be able to make me drink it."

"You're wrong." Tom's fingers twitch, and the bottle soars into his hand. "But fine," he says, and stuffs the bottle in his pocket. "I'll make another one. And this time, you can watch each miserable step. Satisfied?"

Satisfied?

Of course she's not satisfied. She's fuming.

The forest-fire anger in her doesn't trust him, wants to hurt him. Needs to keep blazing, keep consuming. There is no such thing as satisfied. Only hunger. Anger. _More_.

Hermione blinks at him. She pauses.

Unsteady and unsure, feeling like he's pulling one over on her, she narrows her eyes. "Will I be able to see everything? Your hands, the ingredients, _and_ the cauldron?"

"Yes," Tom answers, voice clipped.

"How?"

"I'll find a way."

They're both frowning. They're both staring.

"Alright," Hermione concedes, and a tension breaks.

Compromise. Between the two of them. How unlikely.

Then, half a second later, the tension snaps back into place as Tom pulls a short, blunt wand out of his left pocket. With more pointed emotion than is likely necessary, he makes a familiar but abbreviated gesture, a stunted _swish_ and a swift _flick_ , and suddenly the cot floats up and into the air, following behind him like it's on a leash. Like it's a magic carpet, and she's a stowaway, along for the ride.

She's levitating.

Flying.

Moving through a portion of the room she last visited when she was crawling, near the work table he pulled over from the wall. It's different.

She doesn't know how to feel about it. About any of it. Has never much liked flying, but isn't sure if this counts. How upset she should be.

Before she's able to work herself up into a panic, Tom gestures again with the wand, and her cot settles down smoothly, gingerly, four legs touching the ground all at once.

The linen sheet is taut, bunched between her fingers. She relaxes her unintentional claw-like grip and exhales.

Really, it hadn't been so bad. She hadn't felt so much as a bump.

And now she's here, in his portion of the prison cell.

She wants to look at everything she hasn't been able to see up until now, and can only now just make out — the magically deepened cabinets, the piles of potions ingredients, the _colors_ — but she makes sure to stay focused on Tom. At least for the moment.

After all, he's so close to the knives.

She's not sure why it bothers her this much when he could slice her with his wand, could maim her with a single flick of his wrist, but it does. The longer she thinks about it, the more her skin crawls.

"I'm not doing this for free," Tom says, as a disclaimer. "This will cost you."

It's like he's kicked over a doused campfire. Underneath, an ember burns, waiting.

Something in her wants this, is more than ready for a fight.

"Your _payment_ is my cooperation," Hermione grinds out, stiffening.

Tom looks — frustrated, yes, but more so exasperated. Long-suffering and tired.

"You are aware I don't require your cooperation, correct?"

Hermione glowers. "But here we are."

"Yes," he sighs — actually _sighs_ , "here we are." He picks up a knife.

And, no -

This is not something she's okay with. Not this close, where she can make out the beauty mark under his chin, the now-smooth skin of his cheek, the white-bright glint of cold steel. Not like this, from flat on her back.

Hermione makes an effort to sit up, left arm behind her, pushing against the mattress for leverage, right arm gently resting across her abdomen, like a pregnant woman might cradle her stomach.

The steel knife drops. It clatters on the wooden surface, and Tom reaches out to her from across the worktable like a frantic mother hen. He moves forward but accidentally clips the table with his hip. Has to move around it. By the time he reaches her, arms still extended, she's practically at a ninety-degree angle.

"Hermione, don't -" he starts, arm coming down toward her shoulder. She bats his hand away.

"I'm _fine_ , see?" she tells him brusquely.

And she _is._ She's up.

Tom backs away but seems untrusting. Uncomfortable. "For now," he says, and Hermione ignores him.

She bends down and manages to pull her feet up into a rough approximation of crossed legs. She's practically singing. She almost wants to _smile_.

Everything is sore. Everything is stiff. Everything _hurts_.

But she did it. She's _up_.

She's not sure how long it will last, but for now, it's a triumph. The biggest victory she's had in _days_.

She's sitting up. It's an entire world of difference. Of perspective. Of movement.

Before she can think much more, her hand moves behind her head, under her oily, matted halo of dark curls. The river of thick, tangled hair sweeps up, away from her sweaty neck, to pile high on top of her head.

The relief is immediate. A rush of air so sweet and soothing that she practically sighs. Might have, actually.

Her other hand comes up to her neck and rubs across the long line of it. Her skin is dirty. Raw and grimy.

"If I may?"

Oh. Right. Tom.

It's not a question.

He's holding a knife loosely. Frowning, looking at her strangely.

She lets go of her hair, and the brown curls fall, a too-warm and heavy weight. Keeping her face carefully blank, she braces herself on the mattress, fingers digging into the sheets.

This is where she is.

This time, there's no paralyzing, echoing dissonance at the reminder. She's ready.

"By all means," she says, nodding at Tom. "I'm watching."

.

* * *

.

 **A/N:** Welp, here we are. Alive, for the most part. (For now.)

For those of y'all itching for Hermione to be well again, I hear you, and I agree. This shit ain't easily fixed, though, so buckle up. We're in for a time.

Beta love to **cocoartist**. Not much gets by her. If you did happen to catch something, it's 100% caused by me fidgeting with word choice and flow after she gave me the go ahead. I wish I wasn't like this, but what can you do.

Interested in your thoughts, as always, lovely lurkers, so don't be shy. I'm flying out to Seattle tomorrow and am a bit behind, but review replies are coming soon, I promise. Also, re: Seattle, I have researched zero [0] things to do beyond my initial camping trip because I am a certified Mess. Hit me up with recs, touristy and non, and I will love you even more than I already do.

Xoxo. Til next time!


	13. Chapter 13

**A/N:** _it's my birthday today, so here's a gift to everyone as a thank you. unbeta'd, since i wanted to be sure to get this out this afternoon, but if you catch anything glaring, feel free to let me know. review replies will be done by tomorrow-me. my hungover ass thanks you in advance._

 _now on with the show -_

* * *

 **The Roots of This Tree**

 _Chapter Twelve_ _  
_

* * *

The shrivelfig is a shrunken thing, its flesh a dry and crinkly purple.

 _Dehydrated_ , Hermione thinks as she stares at the rare magical fruit. _This is what a lack of water will do._

Tom's thumb and forefinger hold the fig firmly against the table as his knife snicks its way under the the fruit's tough, leathery casing. The actual peeling of it comes about slowly, layered with an odd, almost sideways kind of fury. It feels like steam, what's bleeding off of Tom; hard to frame, difficult to grasp, slipping in around the corners of his every action.

It's been this way for some time. With each ingredient hauled out by hand instead of magic, each prolonged stretch of his shoulders, each deliberate, unhurried, achingly slow cut — she can't help but feel it's all been designed to slight her.

She couldn't care less, though. Not when it's all she can do to stay upright.

Sitting up had been a mistake.

Her whole life, she'd had an endless well of energy, an ocean of strength that she'd never had to consciously acknowledge the depths of.

Now, that ocean feels like a puddle. A quivering teaspoon, her stamina sloshing over the sides.

It's a mistake. Sitting up had been a mistake.

But it had also been _her_ mistake, and she won't regret making it, no matter how much Tom tries to make her in this new, roundabout way of his.

If anything, she's _glad_. Sitting is a thing she can do now that she couldn't do before. And she'd do it again. Would make this choice every time.

Her shoulders strain, muscles warm and burning.

 _You're here_ , they seem to say. _Still present._

 _Still alive._

And she is.

* * *

Hermione's arms don't shake, not yet, but she honestly doesn't know how much longer they can support her like this.

Five minutes? Ten?

Less time than this potion will take to make, anyway.

And as for the potion after that, and the one after that, and the one after — ?

Hermione sets her jaw and buries the thought. She knows where that road ends, after all.

The road she _doesn't_ know, and the road that is infinitely more concerning, starts somewhere else entirely. Somewhere she can't place or entirely predict.

Her eyes flit to Tom, bent over the table. He's moved from the purple shrivelfig fruit to the grey-green shrivelfig leaves, mincing them slowly, so slowly, his movements drawn-out and emphasized and utterly predictable. But behind his passive aggressive, immature tactics, there's something else she's starting to notice.

And — yes.

There it is. Another one.

A slanted brow, a softened jaw.

A worried glance, thrown her way when he thinks she isn't looking.

Hermione frowns, straightening. This is the third furtive look she's caught, and it's downright unsettling. This tall, cruel, long-limbed thing showing flashes of real concern. Concern for _her_.

It can't actually be right. Hermione knows she's missing something important. Vital, even. The results clear and the cause unknown, like everything else in this godforsaken place.

"Boomslang skin next," Tom announces, carefully pronouncing all four syllables of the perfectly simple phrase. His tone is dry. Perfunctory. Designed, again, to slight her. To emphasize, once more, how unreasonable her _perfectly reasonable_ request had been.

Hermione keeps still as he picks up a long, leathery sheet of the boomslang skin, but inwardly, she fumes. She is _not_ being unreasonable here. He killed someone. Will kill and kill and continue to kill, from now until she is born — and after.

Sure, he says he won't kill _her_ , and maybe she even believes him, but the chasm-like space between _murder_ and _do no harm_ is near-exponential. There are so many other ways to hurt. Ways to die.

 _Whack_.

There's a blur, and a hit, and a smacking sound. Hermione jolts, the suddenness of it taking her by surprise.

The boomslang skin whirls through the air, colliding with the worktable a second time. Immediately, Tom pulls back and swings again, going for a third, treating the magical ingredient like meat that needs tenderizing. _Whack_.

 _Whack._

 _Whack._

Hermione watches his arm swing.

She does not startle again.

* * *

He really is very clever.

Economical, intuitive, bright. Every movement has a meaning. Every word's precise.

She knew it and she knows it, his brilliance, but seeing it is another thing entirely. Living it. Not looking away even for a moment.

It's bound to have an effect.

* * *

"I thought you wanted to monitor the potion-making process, Hermione?"

Tom says this sometime later, after her arms have given out and she's been forced onto her back once more through lack of other options. Though his words resemble a question, would be from anyone else, Hermione knows better.

Still, she replies to him, not really knowing why. "I do want to," she says clearly, her face blank, a mimic to that mask of his he wears so well. "I am."

Tom's dark eyes glint in response. His expression is a bit cruel and a bit cold, like he knows something she doesn't but would never, ever tell.

Hermione does not like it. Not at all.

"Oh, are you?" Tom says, tone light. "Seems like you were more focused on looking at me than the ingredients, is all."

Hermione blinks up at him.

Was that it?

"Well, yes," she says simply. "It's not the ingredients I'm worried about."

Tom mutters something. Gives a low hum of acknowledgment.

He doesn't say anything else for a long time.

* * *

An excruciating hour and a half later, and the first potion is done.

Purple-green and viscous, it resembles nothing short of a liquid bruise.

One potion down. Nine more to go.

At least, nine more if she still wants to start from scratch, which she most certainly does.

She heaves herself up onto an elbow, downing the potion expertly, without giving him so much as a fight to enjoy or grimace to worry over. It's all a well-practiced routine by now, isn't it?

Her head still aches, though. Her abdomen still burns.

She can't go on like this forever. She knows this.

But forever doesn't have to start right now.

"Next potion," she says, easing herself back onto the cot gingerly.

"What?" Tom looks down at her, stunned. "You can't seriously wish to continue this charade. I thought you smarter than this, Hermione."

And isn't that hilarious? Tom Riddle thinking he knows _anything_ about who she is.

He doesn't know how smart she is. He doesn't even know she's a person.

Hermione remains silent, her steady glare all the answer he's going to get from her.

"You're worsening, Hermione. This is madness," he says, voice firm. " _Idiocy_ ," he continues, like that's worse.

She glares again, and of course her body takes that moment to betray her, pain arcing lightning-sharp across her spine. Along her abdomen.

It's telling. So telling.

Tom notices. Makes like he's going to approach.

"I'm fine," Hermione grits out, raising a curt hand to stop him from attempting whatever it is he's planning on.

At her hand, he appears indignant. At her hand, he also stops.

"You're not fine," he says darkly, drawing himself up. "I'm not going through this a second time."

He is firm and cold and final, and she almost shrinks back under the authority he imbues in those words. Almost, as if he wants her to. Almost — but not quite.

"You will drink the potions I've brewed for you," Tom continues, "or I will _make_ you drink them."

There's another flare-up. More of that arcing, shooting pain. And as best as she tries to keep it from her face, Hermione knows she hasn't masked it entirely.

She narrows her eyes at him through it. At the thought that he could make her do anything.

"I've resisted the _Imperius_ before, Tom. I can do it again."

This is, of course, a stretch. Her resistance had taken place in a controlled classroom setting under the wand of the false-Professor Moody, and it had lasted for all of fifteen seconds, but Tom doesn't need to know that.

And it appears, indeed, that he doesn't — because Tom, who she knows has cast the very worst of the Unforgiveables, looks just shy of distressed at her pronouncement. He studies her, his gaze tumultuous and searching and not furtive in the slightest. "That," he says finally, "is not at all what I meant. But interesting."

Hermione glares.

There's another blinding flash of pain. They're like contractions, almost. Getting closer. Getting worse.

Jaw set, she clenches her eyes and rides it out.

A year later, the wave passes, and she blinks, surfacing, opening her eyes.

Tom looks like himself again. He looks different, too.

"A compromise, then," he offers. But it's with a note of finality, as though the subject isn't up for debate.

Immediately, he follows his words with action, with a wave of his hand, summoning a large, empty jar and picking up a short, stubby wand. A murmured word later, and a colorless liquid trickles from the wand's tip. The slight sloshing of it echoes throughout the room. Throughout her body.

When the jar is nearly full, Tom ends the spell with a sharp twist of his wrist, and meets Hermione's incredulous gaze. Not glancing away even for a second, he raises the glass, and takes a long, slow, meaningful sip. His Adam's apple bobs as the liquid disappears down the long line of his throat.

When he extends the glass to her, she takes it without a word of acknowledgment. Her hands tremble, understanding what he's offered her.

It tastes delicious, and it tastes like nothing.

It tastes just as she thought.

Like water.

* * *

The water is not the compromise, of course. It's a bribe.

The compromise comes later, and it is this:

The potions he can imbibe without any ill effects, he will. The remaining potions, three of them, he will make under her watch.

They decide it together. They decide it minutes.

It feels, almost, amicable.

* * *

She doesn't trust it. _Or_ him. But it's progress, she supposes. Progress in the way time moves forward. Progress in the way entropy is.

She is so tired.

* * *

Hermione wakes with the distinct, unmistakable urge to pee.

Her head falls back to the lumpy mattress, and she bites back a groan. She'd known this was bound to happen eventually. It's a normal biological function, after all. One she's literally had all of her life, but still. Still. This is not an event she's looking forward to doing — a conversation with Tom she's looking forward to having.

But, as Hermione takes in the rest of the room, she realizes that luckily or unluckily for her, that conversation may be postponed.

Tom is gone. _Again_.

This time, she looks down immediately.

He's not there, of course. Not on the floor. It doesn't come as a surprise. Judging by the brightness of the room, it's only early afternoon, and while she doesn't know Tom _well_ , exactly — doesn't think anyone does — she would not picture him as a person who naps.

He's really not here, though, and _again_ , it feels like a trap.

She scans the room. There are less places to hide, now, in the light of day.

He's really not here. Not visible.

But then — a ridiculous thought flashes through her head that he could be hiding under the bed, waiting. Waiting to see what she will do. Waiting to lash out a hand and grab her by the ankle if she attempts to run. Has only lulled her to complacence with the recent compromise but is really just as cruel as ever. Crueler, maybe, than even she knows.

She tries to dismiss the thought. Really, she does. But with each passing second, the far-fledged thing grows. Latches further and further in. A niggling thought, burrowing. Plausible, almost. _Real_.

Just as she contemplates whether she's capable of leaning over the cot to peek under the bed, if she's willing and able and even should with a full bladder, there's a — _ting._

A _ting_.

A ringing sound, sudden and insistent.

It's coming from above, from the window, and Hermione _drops_. Ducks down, flung back to Tom's fists flying, banging at the very same glass. Her heart is in her throat, and her mind reels, and she's breathing hard while simultaneously holding her breath. And she's not even _scared_ , really. It's only that she's surprised, only that even if she attempted run, she wouldn't be able to, she couldn't _go_ anywhere, _can't_ go anywhere, she's here, just here, and she's _trapped_ , and —

 _Ting._

Another series of them. Taps. Cuts.

 _Ting - ting - ting_.

She looks up.

Up into a mask of stark white. Inscrutable beady black eyes. And - a beak. A short one.

It's — it's a spotted barn owl, and it's sitting, perched on the window's ledge like it'd always been there, like she'd be crazy to think otherwise. It quirks its round little head at her, turning it a startling ninety-degrees. It blinks.

Hermione's brain short-circuits for an impossible, undetermined length of time, and she just sort of... stares at it. Then it moves, beak tapping against the windowpane in short, sharp bursts — _ting, ting, ting_ — and her brain resumes functioning, as if rebooted, _updated,_ going seemingly faster than before.

She whirls up and fumbles for the latch at the window even as she _knows_ it's locked. Tom likely locked it the moment he slithered back through it all those days and tickmarks ago, but she tries again because she can't not.

Her fingers pull at the latch, and, yes. Okay. She's right.

Locked. It's locked.

Her forehead kind of slumps against the glass, and she half contemplates banging her head against it to see if it'd break, but it's a fleeting, indulgent thought. One she knows is futile and stupid and a waste of time. If _he_ couldn't break it, even at the height of his fury, there's no way she could now.

But she can do other things.

 _See_ other things.

As she peers through the glass, her eyes lock on the letter clutched in the owl's talons. She strains a little further, and — yes!

There it is — writing! A blur of elaborate calligraphy; of looping, connected letters.

An address. It's an address.

Hermione flattens her face against the thick, cool windowpane, pressing herself against it, trying to read what it says. The glass is dirty, so she reaches back to bring the linen bedsheet up, using it like a cloth, wiping it against the window. It kind of works, but it also kind of doesn't, just spreads the dirt around, so she spits on the window and tries again. Has to spit several times.

And even though most of the dirt is on the outside of the window, it helps. Somewhat, at least. She can see.

Can read.

At the top left corner there is a deep, looping emerald she recognizes instantly. Intimately.

HOGWARTS SCHOOL of WITCHCRAFT and WIZARDRY

Hermione's fingers claw at the glass.

Hogwarts. A letter from _Hogwarts_.

Underneath, in the middle, there's more.

MR. T. RIDDLE  
Floor In The Main Room  
Gaunt Residence  
Little Hangleton, Yorkshire

It's larger than the regular back to school letters that are usually sent some time in late July. It can't be that late. She hasn't been keeping track of the date, admittedly, but there's no way she lost _months_ as well as years. There's no way.

Hermione swallows, and the owl leans forward and taps, hard and sharp, right in the center of Hermione's forehead. Where it would be, anyway, if not for the thick pane of glass. The glass reverberates, and the letter twitches in the owl's sharp talons, and when Hermione looks at its white feathered face, surrounded by a ring of tawny brown, she'd swear the owl appeared almost annoyed. It trills, a sharp hooting noise, a _farewell and thanks for nothing_ , and Hermione feels more than hears a broken noise of protest rip from the back of her throat.

A noise the owl doesn't hear either or must ignore, because it launches itself off of the windowsill, making for the front of the shack.

For the front of the Gaunt Residence, if the letter had been correct.

And Hogwarts letters always are.


End file.
